Description: Hotel Bayahibe is less than 200m from a quaint little beach that also serves as a fine launching area for swims across the picturesque bay. There is enough sealife in the bay to keep youngsters intrigued, but don’t expect anything like a tropical reef teeming with color and activity. The water however, is wonderfully warm and pleasant. In the mornings and late afternoons you have to be cautious of the many tour and dive boats motoring out on the east side of the bay. In Bayahibe, we dove several times with the local dive outfit, Casa Daniel, at some of the most highly recommended dive sites. Their service was competent and satisfactory. The dives themselves were interesting and colorful, though fell well short of remarkable, unless this happened to be your first warm-water dive experience. Our diving in Bonaire some 10 years ago was much more engaging, in part because we could dive unsupported straight from the shoreline and the marine life was awesome.
There is also a small delightful beach/ water access about a 10- minute walk out of town. The snorkeling was fun–eels and numerous fish in knee-deep water. My 10-year-old son even had his first scuba dive lesson at this unnamed beach. Unfortunately, like most of the DR, the place is beautiful if only you are able to look past all the trash, which is a disheartening reminder that you are visiting an impoverished third-world country without the means or wherewithal to keep their landscape clean.
Although set back a block or more from the oceanfront, the Hotel dining area has a nice water view and we enjoyed many lovely sunsets from the adjacent balcony. Juana, the hotel manager, was extremely helpful in assisting me with accommodation plans—both at Hotel Bayahibe and in Las Terrenas. The owner of the hotel, Manuel, also serves as headwaiter in the dining room. His attention to our needs was exceptional and unmatched by any restaurant we visited in the DR over the next ten days. While the menu became a bit repetitive after our third day, the food was very good and the “special” meal the hotel provided on the fourth day was fabulous. Wine offerings were very good, and as we found out later in our trip, uncommonly reasonable at $6 to $9/bottle. Total costs for meals averaged about $8 per person, per day, for breakfast AND dinner! Room rates were equally reasonable with two-double beds and three or four people per room at only $50 per night. Our experience was that these costs for comparably comfortable rooms and meals are not at all typical in the DR. Do check out http://www.hotelbayahibe.com
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