The 7 Beaches Hike in Las Galeras, Samaná

Whispers of Paradise

The experience started well before the day we embarked on the tour. It started days, months, years before — when we first heard whispers of this 7 beaches hike in Las Galeras, Samaná. Las Galeras holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the first towns I brought students to back in 2012, when I was in my 20s and tasked with creating travel programs in the Dominican Republic for a student travel company. I looked at a map and thought it was a good spot — literally where the highway met the ocean. Over the years, my family had visited some of the beaches: Rincón, La Playita, Playa Colorada — but we had never really strung them together into a cohesive experience.

The Hike

The hike is one that locals have "always" done. It's so deeply embedded in the collective memory of Las Galeras that it becomes hard to pin down exactly when it started. Was it the fishermen heading out to Playa Cagón — a beach with multiple names, some tied to the nearest landowner, others invented by content creators to sound sexy, others just part of local folklore — because it was the best spot to fish? Was it the locals searching for sea cockroaches clinging to the rocky coastline? Was it a local tourism expert who organized the guides and first thought to offer the hike to visitors? The first person to pull together a group large enough to make it viable? Or was it the content creator who went viral?

It's hard to say who came first — and does it really matter? What's happened more recently is that countless travelers coming to the Dominican Republic have made their way out to Las Galeras to experience a stunning coastal hike that also quietly surfaces deeper questions about land ownership and public access.

La Playita

We started at La Playita — a beach appropriately named "The Little Beach." It's a beautiful spot lined with chairs, full of boats coming and going, serving as the jumping-off point for excursions to hidden beaches and coves scattered along the Samaná Peninsula. This is where we met our guide, who had wisely given us a time range rather than an exact hour — between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. She didn't offer a reason, and I didn't need one. Life happens, and on an island, a time range is just as good as a precise time. Things move slower here, and that's exactly the point.

After a bit of waiting around we were introduced to Raquel, our local guide and head of the Las Galeras guides association. Her partner is the owner of the local dive shop, so between the two of them, they know every inch of this coastline. She made sure we had water and proper gear before setting off. The hike is best done in strapped sandals or sturdy sneakers — some stretches are rocky, and you'll want your footing.

La Cueva Duarte

We walked away from the coast toward La Cueva Duarte, named not after the country's founding father Juan Pablo Duarte, but after one of the original landowners of the property where it sits. As we stepped into the dark expanse of the cave, the temperature dropped and the humidity shifted. You could feel the immediate reprieve from the late-morning Caribbean heat. What made Raquel's guided experience special was the way she layered history — she didn't just present the cave as a relic of the ancient past, where Taíno artifacts can still be found (evidenced by a freshly dug poacher's hole we came across inside). She brought it into living memory, recounting how residents of Las Galeras used these very caves as shelter from storms as recently as the 1990s. Travel in the Dominican Republic often connects you to history that isn't distant at all.

We emerged from the cave onto a sweeping Caribbean tableau and began hiking the coastline in earnest, stopping at different beaches along the way for a quick swim while Raquel pointed out plants, birds, and wildlife. At one stretch, we came across a group of fishermen and asked what they were after. A tiny crustacean — something that looked a lot like a sea cockroach, they said, but apparently delicious.

Many Beaches

So many beaches. Calm, turquoise water. Barely another soul on the trail.

Playa Colorada, true to its name, with its distinctive reddish sands. La Playa de los Enamorados — the beach of the lovers — just intimate enough for a couple to disappear into for an afternoon. And finally, Playa Rincón, where the trail ends at a wide crescent of white sand meeting a small freshwater river running cold from the hills above. Lunch was fresh fish and moro de guandules eaten at a plastic table with sand between our toes — exactly as it should be.

The End

To end it all, you can walk back the way you came. We chose the other option: a small wooden boat for a slightly thrilling open-water ride back to Las Galeras.

If you're planning travel to the Dominican Republic and looking for something beyond the resort walls, this hike in Samaná is one of those experiences that stays with you. It's not just a beautiful trail — it's a window into the Dominican Republic that most visitors never get to see. Book with a local guide, leave a tip, and take your time.

That's the whole point.

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