Cayo Arena

Cayo Arena, also called Paraíso, is a sandbank off Punta Rucia on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, about twenty minutes by boat from the shore. It is a low mound of coral sand a hundred and fifty metres or so long, surrounded by reef and open water.

It is known as the day trip from the north coast, and the trip is the product rather than the island. Boats leave Punta Rucia through a mangrove channel, cross open water and land people on the bank for a few hours with snorkelling, lunch and shade. The Monte Cristi reef system around it is genuinely good and is a protected area.

The bank itself is pure coral sand with no rock, no vegetation and no elevation — it moves and changes size with weather and season, and the outline on any map is a snapshot rather than a boundary. Water on every side is shallow and clear, with the reef starting a short swim out. Fish are abundant and used to being fed, which is a mixed blessing and increasingly discouraged by the better operators. The boat route out is half the trip: it runs through mangrove channels behind Punta Rucia before reaching open water, and the mangrove is the nursery for much of what you then snorkel over on the reef.

There is nothing permanent: seasonal palm-thatch shade structures, and whatever the boats bring. No water, no power, no shelter in a squall.

Thirty metres of sand in open sea with a reef around it and a hundred people on it by eleven. Go early, snorkel first, and understand that the coordinates in any guide are approximate by nature rather than by carelessness — this island moves. The mangrove channels at Estero Hondo on the way back hold one of the last manatee populations in the country, and the boats stop there.