Bayahibe

The offshore diving is built around two wrecks and a wall. The St George, a 73 m cargo ship built in Scotland in 1962 and sunk in June 1999, sits about 800 m off Dominicus beach with its top at 15 m and its maximum depth at 44 m, which makes it the one dive here that is rated for Advanced Open Water. The Atlantic Princess, a former passenger ship put down as an artificial reef in 2009, rests at about 12 m. Catalina Wall, off Catalina Island, starts on shallow reef and drops off, and is dived at 12 to 18 m by divers of all levels.

Behind the town the ground is limestone, and Cotubanamá National Park, renamed from Parque Nacional del Este in 2014, holds the flooded caves. Cueva Padre Nuestro is reached on foot, about 1.9 km of trail from the park entrance, and is shallow: roughly 6 m average and 9 m maximum, in fresh water at 25 to 26 C. Taíno artefacts survive inside it, and Cueva de Chicho, which sits within the same Padre Nuestro sector rather than being a separate neighbouring cave, carries Taíno carvings and paintings on its walls. Both need cavern or full cave certification and a local guide.

The dive centres sit in and beside the village, among them Blue Dreams Diving on Calle Juan Brito and Dressel Divers at the Iberostar Selection Hacienda Dominicus, which puts its main sites within 15 minutes of the pier; the park reefs at El Peñón are about 25 minutes out. The mix suits a week of variety across wrecks, park reefs and a freshwater cave rather than one headline animal, since the sources for these sites describe reef fish, stingrays and barracuda rather than reliable pelagic encounters.