Playa Minitas in the Dominican Republic (5)

Playa Minitas – La playa mas limpia de RD en Casa de Campo

Dominican Republic, English

Las playas de República Dominicana son hermosas. Siempre que pienso en playas de un catálogo de viajes ilustrado, se pueden sacar fotos de República Dominicana. Una playa que recuerdo en particular. Playa Minitas: la playa mas limpia de República Dominicana Casa de Campo. Lea mi historia sobre una hermosa playa en el balneario más antiguo de República Dominicana. ¿Quizás necesitas algo de inspiración caribeña para tus próximas vacaciones?


Tiempo de lectura aproximado: 2 minutos


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Donde se ubica Playa Minitas?

Playa Minitas no es una playa pública. Se encuentra dentro de la prestigiosa Casa de Campo en La Romana. Casa de Campo fue, por cierto, el primer resort en el Caribe y existe desde hace casi 50 años.



Para poder acceder a él es necesario tener permiso para ingresar. Eso hace que la playa sea muy privada en comparación con muchas otras playas de República Dominicana. Las ventajas de las playas privadas son obvias:

  • No todo el mundo puede entrar al recinto
  • Estas playas están equipadas con socorristas y seguridad adicional
  • Menos ruidos, sin vendedores en la playa, mejores instalaciones sanitarias

Pero lo mejor que consideraría es la pulcritud del lugar. En comparación con muchas otras playas del país, allí no encontrará basura plástica. Siempre que visitaba playas públicas, había demasiadas personas descuidadas que dejaban su basura.



Por supuesto, un resort de prestigio como Casa de Campo no puede permitirse fallas y deficiencias en sus instalaciones. La playa estaba muy limpia y organizada. ¡Me encantó su dedicación a apoyar un medio ambiente limpio!

A quien no le guste la arena entre los dedos de los pies tiene una gran alternativa. A unos metros de la orilla hay una piscina. Ideal para personas a las que no les gusta el agua salada y no les gusta estar en medio de las olas.


Playa Minitas in the Dominican Republic (10)
Una buena alternativa cercana: La piscina de Playa Minitas.


Como escribí antes, esta playa fue una de las más grandes que vi en República Dominicana. Estaba tranquilo, no había mucha gente alrededor, y simplemente ese tipo de playa que cabría esperar de un catálogo ilustrado. ¡Un verdadero paraíso!



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Desde mi perspectiva, sería la playa perfecta para familias con niños pequeños. La orilla era muy poco profunda y las aguas en movimiento ni siquiera pueden considerarse olas. Siempre vi algunos socorristas observando las costas. Los niños estarían súper seguros allí y se lo pasarían en grande.

Yo también. ¿Por qué no pueden ser todas las playas como Playa Minitas en Casa de Campo?


Beach report no. 2 – Playa La Herradura (Lima, Peru)

Journal

(Approximate reading time: 7 minutes)

After the great success of the first report about Playa El Silencio (one of the most read articles on this page), I thought, that it would be time to visit another beach.

So I chose one beach that I already knew from my first visit in Lima in 2014. I visited the beach in April and it was a very quiet beach with almost no people there. No people means no one annoys you when you are laying lazy on your chair and try to take a nap. Reality looked different in 2018, but maybe it was because it is still holiday time in Peru. And holiday means a lot of families with a lot of children. But this time it weren’t the children who tried to catch the attention. Read the second beach report about Playa La Herradura and find out, who broke the peace.

Accessibility ☀☀
All the people who don’t have own cars need to go by taxi, because there are no public transport system reaching this beach. Fortunately, taxis are not very expensive in Lima due to high competition. Thanks to Uber, Cabify and Taxibeat, this competition even raised and let prices drop more. For a 20 minute ride I paid only 10.50S/.($3.22 or 2.61€).

Good price!

Value for money ☀☀☀☀
The entrance is free, because it’s a public beach. Lending two beach chairs and an umbrella costs 15S/. ($4.60 or 3.73€), regardless for how many hours you want to have it. So that’s a quite fair price compared to other offers.

Supply system ☀☀

I felt not oversupplied, but rather undersupplied. No ice cream seller shows a lack of entrepreneurship. I do not understand why there are several vendors of towels and sunglasses, but nobody thinks about a wonderful and refreshing ice cream. If I go to the beach, I have of course my towel and my sunglasses with me and don’t need more or new ones. No need to wear a second pair of sunglasses or lay on a second towel. This situation doesn’t change, if the vendor passes twelve times my chair to control if I am still wearing sunglasses or if I am still using the same towel. I simply don’t need more of the things I already have.

Please change your business strategy and try to sell ice cream from now on.

Surface quality ☀☀
During a very hot day (That was as well burning my poor skin) the sand heated up merciless. No way to walk to the shore without burning your feet. But not only the hot sand made a walk to the water a real challenge. Nearly the half of the beach width’ was constructed of huge stones. It was more a balancing act to reach the water than a safe walk. At least the children had fun throwing stones around.

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Safety ☀☀☀☀
The beach itself is not very width, maybe half a kilometer long. Because of that, there is only one little outpost of lifeguards. Surprisingly the members of this unit wore shirts and caps with “Police” on it. I’m not sure if they were real members of the police, because I’ve never seen a police representative with short pants and no shoes on. 

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Tranquility factor ☀☀
Compared to my first visit four years ago, I must say that it was more quiet in 2014 than now. Maybe because of the high season are now much more chairs visible at the beach. More visible chairs at high season mean also to host more guests. But it weren’t the guests who were making the noise, surprisingly it was the one who was renting out the chairs who broke peace:

I have really no idea, whom he wanted to impress or attract with these dances. For a moment I was thinking that I entered up a gay beach, but regarding all the families there that couldn’t be the case. Later on, the same half-naked dancing clown tried to attack guests from a neighbored place:

Activities ☀
Nothing to see, nothing to do at this beach. A little boring.

Level of cleanness ☀☀☀
The beach was semi-clean. Between the sand there were some bottle caps and other rest of the products what people consume. The normal suffer at a beach.

Suitable for Families with children? 
Yes it is. Ignoring the inappropriate behavior of the half-naked dancing clown, also children have a good time at the beach.

Dogs allowed?
Not sure, if dogs are allowed or not, but at Playa La Herradura I didn’t see anyone with a dog, but a few stray dogs. Sad to see!

I am very curious, what I will see on my third expedition to the local beaches. The first two ones were already funny and promising.

Beach report – Playa El Silencio (Lima, Peru)

Journal

(Approximate reading time: 7 minutes)

The only valuable information regarding “Playa El Silencio” I found at tripadvisor.com. Here most information are in Spanish language. Although it is semi-interesting, to read the experiences from several people, there is only a total star rating from 1 – 5 available. Categories like the above mentioned hard factors (accessibility, value for money, security) are not visible on first glance. They might be written in the contribution of the users from tripadvisor.com, but all in all it is a high effort to collect all valuable information together. squeezing out an orange for a glass of juice can be more easy. I didn’t find amongst all the opinions of the user not a detailed report.

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A panorama picture of Playa El Silencio taken from the entrance


So I thought to write about the beach and check the quality, at tripadvisor.com the beach received a four star rating. But how should I know, if the beach is suitable for families with small children? Are dogs allowed at the beach? How expensive is it to access the beach. Read now the first beach report about “Playa El Silencio”.

Accessibility ☀☀☀
It’s not difficult to access the beach, but you have to take quite some time in consideration, regardless if you drive with an own car or use the public transport. Both the traffic in Lima is everywhere awful, in my case I was heading from the centre to the south on a Friday noon and that was quite exhausting. It seemed like the half of Lima wanted to take the highway to go for a long weekend outside of the town. I took a bus from “Mall del Sur” to the closest station of the beach.

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That took maybe 30 – 40 minutes and cost 3.00S/. ($0.93 or 0.75€). Arriving at the middle of the highway you have now the option to take a taxi or go by feet the rest of the distance. I chose to go the rest of the distance.

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Bullshit! It took half an hour maximum. How does Google calculate the walking distance? With old people on crutches?

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For me it was kind of funny to see billboard of Uber. I can’t remember, that I have seen any advertisement of Uber before in my life.

Anyway, unfortunately I underestimated the force of the sun on 11:30am and walked these 30 minutes without putting sunscreen earlier. Quite naive, so I got burned a little bit, but didn’t feel it, when I arrived. But when I arrived, I put on sunblock as I should. Lesson learned!

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All in all, it took 70 – 80 minutes until I arrived. And I think, that this is quite a lot but still bearable for a Friday traffic chaos in Lima.

Value for money ☀☀☀
Good and low are the costs for the public transport to access the beach. The entrance is free, because it’s a public beach. All the rest is far off consideration and quite exclusive. Lending two beach chairs and an umbrella cost 30S/. ($9.30 or 7.50€), regardless for how many hours you want to have it. Avarice is a vice, but in my perception, this is quite a lot to not lay in the bear sand and get a stiff bag. To avoid these vexations, I had to bite the bullet. At least the usage of the sanitation facilities of one of the restaurants was included. Everything else to buy and consume was quite expensive in my opinion.

Supply system ☀☀☀☀
Wow, although it’s a public beach, there was no lack of everything. The beach is definitely well equipped with restaurants and beach vendors. It was actually a little bit annoying to enter the beach and get directly molested from five different people who want to bring you inside of one of the restaurants or sell you the beach chairs. Only on bazars in Arabistan it might be more annoying and a pain in the arse than at this beach.
At the beach itself I felt very oversupplied of all the beach vendors. You can’t sit quietly for 30 seconds in your chair, because then the next expert wants to impose you his products.

I was quite surprised, that irrespectively of the ratio of 1:3 (one tourist and three vendors) their business was still successful. No cannibalization, even if you could ice cream every minute of the same company. Even if you would erase the half of these nuisances, it would have been still enough to make every guest at the beach happy.

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Not sure, if selling books is a good idea at the beach…At least this beach vendor doesn’t need a gym membership, if he is carrying these heavy books in his hands all day long.

Surface quality ☀☀☀☀☀
Wonderful gritty sand with just a few shells or stones. Not too hot, not too cold.

Safety ☀☀☀☀
There might have been sufficient lifesavers and other security guys walking around. At least I didn’t feel insecure of any threats like thefts. But the only thing that made me wonder was the yellow flag, although there were some crazy intense waves. Some people, especially young fellas, had their little problems to swim and get back to the shore.

Tranquility factor ☀☀
The beach is called “El Silencio”, but the last thing you can expert there is silence. You can’t take a nap, if all 30 seconds someone yells at you to buy a cold beer. The good level of (over)suppliance gets down the tranquility of the beach. I simply can’t eat an ice cream and drink a beer every minute. That’s not possible, even if I wanted to or had enough money for it.. At least there wasn’t any loud music to hear from the restaurants or other tourists.

Activities ☀
Maybe the only thing, that was really missing. There weren’t any extrinsic activities possible at the beach. Nobody wanted to teach me how to surf or hire out a jet ski. Neither were there any beach volleyball pitches or other activities possible. I wasn’t bored because of that, but expected at least something when going to a beach.

Level of cleanness ☀☀☀☀☀
Wonderful! In combination with the fine sand, there wasn’t anything to complain here. No glass, plastic or other garbage to evade to walk on. The beach was very clean and even every beach vendor picked up the garbage from the tourists along their walking paths. Were they obliged from someone to do that or proceeded with it on own motivation? No matter, but at least the beach was nice and clean.

Suitable for Families with children?
Yes it is. Maybe a bit boring, but definitely suitable for families with children. Parents might be not able to take a nap because of missing activities for the children, but that’s the price you have to pay when going to the beach. But keep always an eye on your youngsters when you let them inside of the water. Remember the crazy waves when showing only the yellow flag?

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First I was laughing and wondering about someone who tries to sell a swimming pool at the beach. But offering it to a family for little children is a good idea.

Dogs allowed?
I don’t remember that I saw any signage regarding a ban of dogs. Neither did I see a dog. I think, that’s a ‘Yes’. Well, actually a ‘No’ then. I suppose, that dogs aren’t allowed.

Well, I can just recommend to go and make a visit at Playa El Silencio!