Alma de la Isla: 8-Day Women’s Group Trip to the Dominican Republic

Welcome to the island. Welcome home.

The trip begins the moment you land. We meet you at Santo Domingo airport and take you by private transfer to the Colonial Zone, the historic center of the city, where your hotel is.

In the evening, a welcome dinner at a cultural house. You meet the women you will travel with and your local host. Conversation, Dominican food and new faces that will soon be familiar.

Today you understand the island through what is eaten and what almost no one tells.

In the morning, an Afro-Taíno cooking workshop with Maribel in the Colonial Zone. Cazabe, chenchén, mabí: ingredients where Taíno and African traditions meet, in recipes that are disappearing. We cook together and eat what we make.

In the afternoon, an Afro-history tour of the Colonial Zone, with guides who tell the Afro-Dominican history that never appears on the monument plaques.

At night, Santo Domingo is lived in the street: Dominican street food and a cultural gathering where bachata and merengue are danced with locals. You do not need to know how to dance. Here you learn by dancing.

Today the city is left behind and the mountains set the clock.

We leave Santo Domingo for the interior. Halfway there we stop for a river adventure: the first freshwater swim of the trip.

Then we reach the farm of Kenida and don Carlos, who open their home the way you welcome family. We spend two nights here. The afternoon has no agenda: rest, walk among the trees, stay in the hammock or talk with them about life in the mountains.

Today the island stops being a landscape and starts to be something of yours.

We set out early to hike the mountains of the Dominican Republic, in search of waterfalls. It is a hike of about 8 km, of medium-high difficulty, which we will do at our own pace. At the end, a cold-water swim that wakes up the whole body is waiting.

Afterwards, surrounded by the sound of water and the hills, a wellness ritual to connect with ourselves, with the women beside us and with nature.

It is the heart of Alma de la Isla.

Today the road is the trip too.

We say goodbye to the farm and to Kenida and don Carlos, and cross the island toward the beach. But we do not go straight there: a surprise stop and a whole day of adventure are waiting along the way. We will not tell you more. Just bring a swimsuit and an appetite for it.

Today the sea is explored on foot.

We walk the coast, following the shore and the trails that link one beach to the next. It is a route of about 5 km, of low difficulty. Our guide is Miguel, born in the village, who knows every corner and every shortcut of this coast.

We stop at each beach to swim, and halfway along we eat with flavors from the coast.

The last day at sea, just as we deserve.

We leave Las Galeras on a private local boat with Miguel, our guide, heading for a beach you can only reach by sea. On the way we stop to snorkel and see what lives underwater.

Once on the beach, the food is cooked right there and eaten with your feet in the sand. The afternoon is for swimming, laughing and toasting to everything we have lived.

In the evening, the farewell dinner. A table to give thanks, tell each other what we are taking home and close surrounded by the women who started out as strangers at the first dinner.

The island does not say goodbye. It stays with you.

The last morning at the beach begins slowly. We have breakfast together one last time, with hugs and promises to come back, and there is still time for one last swim in the sea, the one you keep in your memory.

Then we take you to the airport by private transfer. You leave with a slightly fuller suitcase, with new friends and with the island, its people and its soul already inside you.