Samaná

The peninsula entered written history on 13 January 1493, when Christopher Columbus made the last stop of his first voyage here, landing at what is now Playa Rincón. The Ciguayos who met him put up the only violent resistance he faced on that voyage, and two of them were wounded in the clash. For most of the colonial period the Spanish did not settle there, leaving it open to runaways and privateers.

In 1756, under the Spanish governor Francisco Rubio y Peñaranda, families from the Canary Islands founded the village and named it Santa Bárbara de Samaná, after Queen Barbara of Braganza, wife of Ferdinand VI; they also settled across the bay at Sabana de la Mar. In 1824, when Haiti ruled the whole island, President Jean-Pierre Boyer invited Black Americans to emigrate, and thousands sailed from cities in the eastern United States. Fewer than 600 settled at Samaná, but they formed the only immigrant enclave that survived; they prospered, and their descendants are known as the Samaná Americans.

The deep, sheltered bay drew foreign interest, and in 1869 a US treaty to annex the country, including the purchase of Samaná Bay, was negotiated before the US Senate defeated it in 1870. Pedestrian bridges to the cays in front of the town were built in the late 1960s. The El Catey airport opened in 2006, followed by the motorway to the capital in 2008, and whale watching has made the town a centre of the country's winter tourism.

The Samaná Americans give the town its distinctive identity. Their language, Samaná English, is a variety related to African American Vernacular English and to the English of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos; it survived partly because Samaná's isolation allowed an independent cultural life, and partly because it was kept alive in church schools. In the 1950 census about 12,200 people in the country named English as their mother tongue. Today only a few members of the community speak it natively, and all of them also speak Spanish.

Most follow the African Methodist Episcopal and Wesleyan denominations their ancestors brought with them, and in the evangelical church's quarter psalms are sung to a gospel rhythm in English and Spanish. La Churcha, the church that is the town's symbol, is the starting point each year of the Fiesta de la Cosecha, a harvest procession through the streets with offerings and bands. The bambulá, sung in Creole with group dances whose choreography recalls 18th-century court dances, is practised in communities of the province such as La Aguada, Tessón and Anadel.

The patron-saint festival of Santa Bárbara falls on 4 December, and the whales shape the winter. From January to March the bay fills with humpbacks, the harbour is crowded with boats, and the town becomes the centre of the country's tourism.

The municipality of Samaná had about 63,000 people at the 2022 census, about two-fifths of them in urban areas; it includes the municipal districts of El Limón, Las Galeras and Arroyo Barril as well as the town. Tourism, agriculture and fishing are the main economic activities. It is the largest municipality in the province, covering almost half of its area.

Most of the town sits in the hills that enclose a small coastal plain, and most of the municipality is taken up by the Sierra de Samaná, a short range of steep slopes whose highest point, Monte Mesa, reaches 605 metres. Coconuts are the main crop of the province's coastal zone, which makes it the country's leading coconut producer.

The whale season brings the biggest boost to the local economy, and the harbour's pace picks up sharply from January to March. Samaná Bay is part of the country's marine mammal sanctuary, which protects the whales and dolphins that visit its waters.

Samaná province is the country's main coconut producer, and pescado con coco, a whole fish in a coconut-milk sauce, is a speciality on the peninsula. Restaurants in town range from typical Dominican cooking to Italian and French, and tostones, fried green plantain, are a common Dominican side.

The Samaná Americans keep many elements of 19th-century African American culture, their cooking among them. Coconut sweets such as dulce de coco, coconut fudge, and pan de coco, coconut bread, are common Dominican treats.

Everyday meals in comedores are la bandera — white rice, red beans and stewed meat — and mangú, mashed green plantain typically served with fried cheese, fried salami and fried eggs, for breakfast; pastelitos, or empanadas, and chicharrón are among the country's other well-known foods. Presidente beer and rum are the country's most popular drinks, served in the town's roadside and late-night bars, and mamajuana is rum, red wine and honey steeped with bark and herbs.