Sublime Samana

Playa Coson Rewards the Drive Over the Mountain

The road from Santo Domingo climbs the cordillera, drops into Las Terrenas, then keeps going west until the town thins out and the beach opens up. That is Playa Coson: miles of pale sand, palms leaning over it, almost nobody on it. Sublime Samana sits on that beach, a low white composition of casitas and suites whose floor-to-ceiling windows take in the water on one side and the green ridge of the peninsula on the other. It belongs to Small Luxury Hotels of the World, which on this coast still means something. The architecture is the first thing you notice. The silence is the second.

Why It Works

The beach decided it. Playa Coson is the finest stretch on the peninsula and the hotel has it more or less to itself, without the fence-and-wristband logic of the big resorts further east. The rooms are designed rather than decorated, and the best casitas add a rooftop terrace or a private plunge pool, which changes the shape of a day. Two pools keep families and couples from competing for the same loungers. And Coconut Whispers, with five treatment cabins and a temazcal, is a real spa rather than a room with a candle in it.

Why This Location

Las Terrenas is about ten minutes east, a French and Italian flavoured town of beach restaurants, bakeries and a small marina, which gives you somewhere to eat that is not the hotel. Push further and the peninsula delivers: the El Limon waterfall inland, Playa Rincon around the headland, and the mangroves and caves of Los Haitises across the bay. Samana Bay fills with humpback whales through the winter, and the boats leave from Samana town. El Catey international airport is roughly forty minutes by road; Santo Domingo is a long drive, which is why most guests fly in.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: architectural, barefoot, low-voiced

• Rooms: architect-designed suites and casitas of one to three bedrooms, several with private plunge pools, jacuzzis or rooftop terraces

• Best For: couples, families taking a casita, small groups who want a house on the sand

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the temazcal at Coconut Whispers, and treatments built on stones from the Samana river, coconut and honey

• Dining: The Bistro for Mediterranean and French fusion, indoors or on the terrace, and the Beach Grill for local seafood with your feet in the sand

• Amenities: two pools, one for families and one for adults, spa with five cabins and a salon, gym, water sports, direct access to Playa Coson

• Attractions: Las Terrenas about ten minutes away, the El Limon waterfall, Playa Rincon, Los Haitises national park, and the winter whale season in Samana Bay

Casitas, Suites, and Which One to Take

The accommodation splits between suites of one and two bedrooms and casitas of two and three, the latter closer to small houses than to hotel rooms. Floor-to-ceiling glass is the common thread, so mornings arrive whether you ask for them or not. The casitas with a rooftop terrace are the ones worth requesting: they turn the evening into a private event, ridge behind, sea in front. A plunge pool comes with some of them, which matters more than it sounds when the beach is a hundred paces away and you still do not want to move.

Two Kitchens, Two Moods

The Bistro is the indoor room, Mediterranean and French leaning, with a terrace for the cooler end of the day and enough range to carry a week of dinners. The Beach Grill is the other half of the argument: local seafood, no shoes, long lunches that turn into afternoons. Between them the hotel avoids the trap of the isolated address, where dinner becomes a hostage situation by the third night. Las Terrenas stays ten minutes away when you want a change of scene.

What to Know Before You Book

This is a quiet address on a quiet beach, so if you want a casino, a nightclub or an animation team, look east to Punta Cana instead. Playa Coson carries surf and current on some days, which is part of its character, and the pools take over when it does. A car is useful for exploring the peninsula, though taxis run into town easily enough. Book the rooftop casitas well ahead: the people who have stayed in them tend to come back for the same ones.