Puerto Plata

About

A stone’s throw from where Christopher Columbus established the first European settlement in the New World, Puerto Plata was designed by Columbus and his brother, and settled within a few years of Santo Domingo. As one of the oldest cities in the Americas, there’s plenty of history to discover. The city itself was razed in 1863 and rebuilt, with its historic downtown exhibiting the largest collection of Victorian style houses in the Caribbean. Watching over it is the 16th century San Felipe Fortress, which along with great views, presents military artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries. But if panoramic views are your thing, you’ll want to make a bee-line to the cable car, which will whisk you to a mountain top 2,650 feet above Puerto Plata’s lush landscape. Then, of course, there are the many nearby white sand beaches where you can bask in the Caribbean sun or take to the sea windsurfing or kiteboarding.