La Romana

Casa de Campo's golf reputation rests substantially on Teeth of the Dog, a Pete Dye-designed course with several holes running directly along the Caribbean coastline, regularly ranked among the best courses in the world. Altos de Chavón, built within the resort in the 1970s as a deliberately artificial recreation of a 16th-century Mediterranean village, sits on a bluff above the Chavón River and has genuinely outgrown its origins as a developer's folly — its amphitheatre hosts real international concerts, and its Regional Museum of Archaeology holds a serious collection of Taíno artefacts from the surrounding area.

Bayahibe remains a genuine fishing village even as it's become the region's main tourism gateway, its brightly painted boats still used for both fishing and the daily excursions to Saona Island that now form the backbone of its economy. Saona itself, part of Parque Nacional del Este, delivers the postcard version of Caribbean scenery almost too consistently — palm-backed white sand and shallow turquoise water, including natural sandbars where boats stop for swimming in waist-deep water far from shore. Full-day trips typically combine beach time with a stop at the sandbars and lunch on the island; visiting independently rather than through an organised tour is difficult given the boat access required.