Punta Cana

At the time of the Spanish conquest this was part of the Taíno chiefdom of Higüey, and for centuries afterwards the coast at the eastern tip of Hispaniola was little more than wild land, ranches and coconut groves. Off Cabo Engaño, the island's easternmost point, much of a Spanish fleet bound for Spain with treasure and colonists sank in a storm in 1502.

Modern Punta Cana began in the late 1960s, when a young Dominican entrepreneur and a New York lawyer and their partners bought a huge tract of coast that then had no roads or harbours; Higüey, the nearest city, was then a five-hour drive away. Their first project was a 40-guest hotel, and in 1970 the place, previously called Yauya or Punta Borrachos, was renamed Punta Cana. Larger hotels followed from the late 1970s, a private international airport opened at the end of 1983, and resort building spread north along the beaches of Bávaro.

Bávaro was planned as a town for resort workers but became the area's service centre, and in 2002 it hosted the Ibero-American Summit. In 2006 the area was incorporated as the Verón–Punta Cana tourist municipal district, part of the municipality of Higüey. The waters around it were declared a marine reserve in 2012. Punta Cana is now one of the most visited destinations in Latin America, and it is due to host a session of the International Olympic Committee in 2027.

Punta Cana is a young place, made by tourism and by the people who came to work in it. Most residents arrived within the last few decades, from other parts of the Dominican Republic and from Haiti, and many of the beach hotels are owned by European, mostly Spanish, chains. The result is a coast where merengue and bachata play in beach bars beside international pop, and where Spanish, English and several European languages mix.

Entertainment has grown beyond the resorts. The area has large nightclubs that combine dancing with staged shows of acrobatics and choreography, and the area offers a wide range of water sports, from diving and snorkelling to windsurfing, deep-sea fishing and catamaran cruises, along with buggy and horse-riding trips into the countryside.

Religious life looks inland to Higüey, the old provincial capital about an hour's drive away, whose basilica of Our Lady of Altagracia draws tens of thousands of pilgrims on its feast day, 21 January, a national holiday. Among residents, Sunday family time, baseball on the radio and evenings at the colmado follow the rhythms of the rest of the country.

The Verón–Punta Cana municipal district had 138,919 people at the 2022 census. Verón, the largest town, began as an unplanned settlement along the old road from the west and is home to many hotel workers, while Bávaro holds the shopping malls, banks, clinics, schools and supermarkets. A large share of the workforce is made up of migrant workers, many of them Haitian.

Tourism dominates everything. The airport handles most of the country's international flights, and the resorts, excursions, transport, building sites and services employ most of the population. Planned communities and gated housing developments with golf courses have grown up around the cape, and Punta Cana Village, with about 3,000 residents, was built to a master plan near the airport.

Daily life runs on shifts: staff commute between Verón and the hotels by guagua and motoconcho, and the roads are busy at changeovers. Verón grew as a spontaneous and poor settlement, and the gap between the resort coast and the worker towns behind it is plain to see.

Most visitors eat in the resorts, whose buffets and restaurants serve international food. Outside them, the local table is the same as across the east: la bandera of white rice, red beans, stewed meat and salad, sancocho, a thick stew of several meats and root vegetables, and fried fish with tostones, twice-fried slices of green plantain.

Seaside fishing villages across the country offer a wide variety of seafood, most often shrimp, marlin, dorado and lobster, and beach stalls sell fresh coconut water. Verón's comedores serve the cheapest everyday meals, and Bávaro's restaurants range from pizza and seafood to Dominican home cooking. Many Dominicans see out the old year with a pot of sancocho.

Mamajuana, rum, red wine and honey steeped with bark and herbs, is sold in bottles all over Punta Cana as a souvenir and folk tonic. Presidente beer and rum are the everyday drinks, and the province's extensive cattle ranches supply beef.