Los Haitises National Park

Los Haitises National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Los Haitises is the mangrove and karst park on the southern shore of Samaná Bay in the north-east of the Dominican Republic, and it is visited almost entirely by boat from Sabana de la Mar or across the bay from Samaná, with a park entrance fee paid at the ranger post. The standard tour is a half-day boat trip through the mangrove channels to the caves with Taíno rock art, sold from Sabana de la Mar, Samaná and, as a long day trip, from Punta Cana, Miches and Santo Domingo; the Punta Cana versions spend most of the day on the road and often add the Montaña Redonda viewpoint or the Cano Hondo lodge with its natural pools.

Kayak tours at sunrise or sunset get you into the narrow channels that the motorboats cannot enter and are the quietest way to see the birds. Guided hikes and overnight camping trips walk into the forested hills behind the coast, and night tours look for the endemic ashy-faced owl. Between January and March the same boats run humpback whale-watching trips on the bay, and some tours combine the two. Prices from Sabana de la Mar are a fraction of those from Punta Cana, so if you can get to the small town yourself, book there.

Visiting Los Haitises National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1976 and covers roughly 630 square kilometres of conical limestone hills, sinkholes, caves and the largest mangrove forest in the Caribbean, in a region that gets around two metres of rain a year. From the water it is a landscape of green humps rising from the bay, the mogotes, with islets offshore where frigatebirds and brown pelicans nest in colonies close enough to watch from the boat; the mangroves themselves shelter herons, egrets and the Ridgway's hawk, one of the rarest raptors in the world, which survives almost only here.

The caves are the other draw: Cueva de la Arena, Cueva de la Línea and San Gabriel have petroglyphs and pictograms left by the Taíno people who lived here before Columbus, images of faces, birds and the shaman figures the guides explain, along with stalactites and bats. The hills inland are covered in subtropical forest with palms and tree ferns, and the Caño Hondo area at the park edge has a series of pools and small waterfalls fed by springs where the tours stop to swim. Manatees are occasionally seen in the bay, and humpback whales gather offshore in winter. Visitor numbers are capped to protect the caves, and the boats keep to marked channels.

Los Haitises National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from about 8 am to 5 pm, and the boat tours leave in the morning, when the bay is calm and the birds are active. The dry months from December to April are the most comfortable, and January to March adds the whales; the rainy season from May to November brings afternoon downpours and choppy water on the bay, though the mangroves are at their greenest. Hurricane season peaks in September and October. Allow half a day from Sabana de la Mar or Samaná and a full day from Punta Cana. The El Limón waterfall on the Samaná peninsula and the beaches of Las Terrenas are the nearby additions, and the Cayo Levantado island is a common stop on tours from Samaná.