Boca Chica is a small resort thirty kilometers from Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic — a resort bursting with local color in every sense of the word.
Oh, those women! Oh, those lips!
My first association when I hear “Boca Chica” is stacks of large corn-flour flatbreads piled one on top of another, mounds of oversized mangoes on every corner, plenty of motorcycles, and lips — the full, generous lips of a Dominican mulatta.
Translated from Spanish, “la boca” means “mouth” and “chica” means “girl.” So literally, it comes out as something like “the girl’s lips.”
The resort’s atmosphere is incredibly colorful. It feels like stepping back into the distant past of old Latin America. From early morning, street vendors offer paintings in the “Haitian naïve” style, while the smell of freshly brewed coffee drifts from tiny colmados — hole-in-the-wall spots where they make delicious empanadas, pastries fried in oil with various fillings, similar in shape to a chebureki. My favorite empanadas are “queso con maíz” — with cheese and corn inside — though there are also ham- and even pizza-flavored ones. And while empanadas are found all over the Dominican Republic, those big round corn-flour flatbreads are more of a Boca Chica specialty. They’re fried in oil too.
To really soak up this little resort’s distinct smell and taste, you need to wake up early, grab a coffee for 10 pesos in a plastic cup from a corner shop, along with a couple of empanadas or a big corn flatbread, and head to the sea! Around seven or eight in the morning, while most tourists are still finishing breakfast at their hotel, the Caribbean Sea is crystal clear, calm, and shimmers with an incredible turquoise glow in the morning sun. And you can’t even imagine how warm and gentle the water is!
After breakfast and a swim, it’s nice to take a walk along the seaside street that runs from the Be Live Experience Hamaca Beach hotel. There’s no shortage of things along this little street — nail salons, hair salons, and countless shops selling local textiles. I’d strongly advise against visiting these “beauty salons,” especially the ones set up right on the beach, but it’s absolutely worth picking up pure-cotton white dresses, sundresses, shirts, and pants in Boca Chica. They’ll shield you from the sun in the heat and look absolutely stunning in photos! And the prices are lovely too — anywhere from $15 to $30 per item. If nothing else, the prices in Boca Chica will make you very happy.
If you keep walking along the first beachfront street, you’ll soon come across a post office. Postcards there are the cheapest around, and you can send them straight from the Dominican Republic to your friends, with a stamp costing around $2–3. That postcard will take at least a month to arrive, that’s for sure — but imagine how thrilled the recipient will be to get a note from the Caribbean!
Just past the post office is a small park with cozy benches and a Catholic church. Services are held there almost every day, with the schedule posted on the gate. This is a place for anyone who simply wants a break from the daily hotel bustle, to watch everyday Dominican life unfold, and maybe even try to unravel the mystery of the Dominican soul.
The park itself will appeal to anyone with an artistic eye for the world, anyone who can spot beauty in ordinary things, even through a camera lens. Bring a camera along on your walk and capture some unusual shots — “Dominicans playing dominoes” here, “a boy selling avocados” there! Just dress as plainly as possible so you don’t stand out from the crowd, become an unnoticed, almost invisible observer… and you’ll discover all sorts of interesting things!
An evening transformation
In the evening, Boca Chica truly comes alive, and starts to resemble a “red-light district” more than anything else. Food stalls, small restaurants, and countless bars with flashing lights and loud music open up. All the day’s charm gives way to an atmosphere of debauchery and drunken revelry. If that kind of scene isn’t your thing, I’d recommend heading to one of the best seafood restaurants and treating yourself to a real feast!
I’ll be honest — the best seafood I’ve ever had in my life was right here in Boca Chica. At the beachfront Neptuno’s Club Restaurant, located just to the left of the Be Live Experience Hamaca Beach hotel, you can order a “Plato del Mariscos” — a grilled seafood platter. The waiter brings out a huge dish piled with king shrimp, chunks of spiny lobster, delicate pink octopus tentacles, various fish fillets, and slices of conch. A refined garlic-cream sauce makes the perfect finishing touch to this stunningly prepared seafood. The plate they brought us was so enormous that the three of us could barely finish it! The whole feast cost us around 3,500 pesos.
If you’re more of a shrimp person, there’s a small eatery near the Bellevue Dominican Bay hotel that cooks them beautifully too. A large portion for 500 pesos gets you 12 king shrimp with sauce and a mound of rice in the middle. You can also enjoy a Creole-style fish dish, like “Mero a la Criolla,” with tomato sauce and vegetables. In short, the seafood we got to try in Boca Chica was fresh, incredibly tasty, and affordable.
Choosing Boca Chica as your resort is also very convenient thanks to its location and proximity to major sights. The capital, Santo Domingo, is just half an hour away — a whole world of its own, with its own Christopher Columbus history, its own scenery, parks, and neighborhoods, well worth a visit. There’s Saona Island, the subject of countless legends, an uninhabited island buried in groves of leaning coconut palms. And there’s the Samana Peninsula — a mysterious paradise where humpback whales come every January for their mating rituals. Boca Chica is simply the closest — and, naturally, the cheapest — place from which to head out and see all these spots!
