Wild Swimming in Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic

Playa Frontón sits beneath a limestone cliff at the end of the Samaná Peninsula and can only be reached by boat from Las Galeras — a fifteen-minute crossing that delivers you to a beach that sees a fraction of the visitors that road-accessible beaches receive. The cliff drops directly into turquoise water on one side, the beach curves around a protected cove on the other, and snorkelling along the base of the cliff puts you above coral formations in water clear enough to see the bottom at ten metres. Playa Rincón, reachable by boat or a rough road from Las Galeras, is a different scale entirely — three kilometres of near-empty beach where a cold river meets the sea at the eastern end, the kind of beach that makes other Caribbean beaches feel like rehearsals. Both beaches are at their best from February through April when dry season clarity peaks and the Atlantic swells that make boat crossings rough in winter have settled into the calmer patterns of spring.