| Tips for getting around Santo Domingo posted by real travelers and Santo Domingo locals. Santo Domingo Map |
 | Santo Domingo Transportation | Tips 1 - 10 of 55 |  |
From Bavaro (near Punta Cana) you can take a bus going directly to Santo Domingo (without intermediate stop) in 2 hours for 170 pesos. The come back takes 3 hours because the bus follows a different path.
The bus is comfortable with air conditioning (too cold !!! take a jacket with you) and the ubiquitous music (only merengue !!!)
Taxi are more expensive.
The bus makes a brief stop just to make the passengers stretch their legs or have a snack or go to the toilet (toilet ????....I can't describe the toilet...).
In this pic you can see the refresh point and .....the sausage hanging up !!!!! Leave a Comment Theme: Bus
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There are two methods, that I know of, of getting around from place to place in Santo Domingo:
There are the Publicos, which are public cars, drivers will drive and honk constantly, when they are looking for passengers. . . until they get one. They are cheap and will usually get you where you wanted to go.
And the Guaguas (sounds like wawas).. which is the Caribbean spanish word for "Bus"... wherein another spanish-speaking countries, "camion" or "autobus" is more common.
You can find any of these anywhere you are and functioning well as long as there's gas in the country for transportation. Leave a Comment Theme: Bus
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a city as chaotic and as mad as santo domingo is gonna cause grief for the tourist that doesnt speak spanish, and that was the case for me. (and a few germans i met!). the public transport system in SD is crazy. no set times, no order, no direction. traffic everywhere, chaotic mess. i would see locals pile into little minivans, 10 crammed into a car, knowing where they were going. i didnt want to risk that! buses crammed with people as well, old old buses that were about to fall apart.
by the end of it all, i became a taxi hopper. or a walker. the great thing is the colonial zone is easy to walk around. that isnt the problem. but to get out to see the sights like the faro colon, or the botanic gardens, you will be best to take a taxi. around US$10 for both of those options.
taxis can be found lining up at parque colon, or near plaza de la hispanidad. just look for the men standing around smoking and chatting all day. lol. at first i was a bit weary, being a young single girl, with these men driving, but they were all very professional and extremely kind. be warned though, they do not know english, so have where you want to go written down, or learn some basic spanish.
i ended up using the services of a very nice guy called eugenio. i organised my next day's pickup, and i decided to use him because he was kind, and was a bit of a negotiator (although once again my concience came into play and i would always pay him extra!) . he spoke a bit of english, italian and german.
he can be contacted on his cell, 809-395-0500, and he is a registered tourist guide of santo domingo, although he really just drives a taxi. haha Leave a Comment Theme: Car/Motor Home
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getting to santo domingo is the easy part. delta flies from atlanta to the aeropuerto internacional las americas, and it only takes about 2 hours. so enjoy that trip, because the next one is not so pleasant!
when you walk outside of the airport it is CHAOS! there are no shuttle buses or cheap vans to take you into town, so you have taxi drivers trying to get your business. it is hot, the humidity hits you like a blanket, and here you are with your luggage having a bunch of spanish speaking men trying to take you to their car. a bit disconcerting for a young fool like me! anyway followed a guy, and it costs US$40 to get into the colonial zone, a half hour ride away. im like, erm, let me negotiate, and i tell him $30. there was NO room for negotiation. as he said, the fuel prices, the fuel prices. he gave it to me for $35 at the end, because i said i would walk. lol. by the journeys end, i felt so sad for him, and his life, that i paid him $40. sometimes you just feel like a cow if you screw people down too much. he had 5 mouths to feed dammit!
anyway after talking to others, local and tourists, it is definitely at least $40 for a taxi (i feared i had been ripped off, but all taxi drivers have a price listing on file).
so yeh, moral of the story. taxi is an only option from the airport, which is pretty crap, but thats the way it goes. have a good amount of US dollars on you for this purpose. Leave a Comment Theme: Airplane
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Convenient, cheap but less safe than the buses. The share-a-taxis are popular among capitaleños (people from Santo Domingo). You might have seen them: a typical car with the driver, 2 people on the front seat and 4 on the back. They'll travel the same route back and forth and will pick up and drop off passengers wherever (although not in the middle of the street ;)). Because their routes are shorter they're more expensive than the buses if you travel a distance as long as the buses. Good for a short ride from point A to point B. When you want the driver to stop so that you can get off, say "déjame" (de'hahme, sort of). Theme: Car/Motor Home
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A metro line is being constructed in Santo Domingo and it's expected to be fully operational in Feb 2008 but will be formally open to the masses in Apr 2008. The route consists of 16 stations for a length of 14,5km.
Edit Apr 2009: alright, so we took the metro. The wagons reminded me of the Madrid metro and it's not so weird considering that they financed the project :) The stations are very clean and safe and patrolled by law enforcement people and the process of buying the ticket is very efficient. The ticket is actually a card that everyone must buy and it costs 30 pesos (a little less than 1 US), then every single trip costs 20 pesos. You place the card on top of the turnstile and pass.
We did the trip for the whole line once and then got off at the station closest to where I can go home. Total price? 70 pesos.
The stations don't have names according to the streets close to it, but of people that are/were important to the Dominican history but under the name you'll see which street or "landmark" it's close to.
The one tourist attraction that this metro line passes by is Teatro Nacional (National Theater) and the station to get there is called Casandra Damirón. Theme: Subway/Metro
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In Santo Domingo we have 2 kinds of buses:
OMSA buses: the government buses with scheduled stops, they come in 3 kinds: the ones without air conditioning and the cheapest ones, the ones with air conditioning and the express ones that make less stops. If you want to get off you simply pull the cord.
Union buses: property of the various transport unions, the route they drive is usually indicated by a piece of cardboard with the number of the route on the main windshield, visible so that we can stop the bus by stretching and arm and moving the index finger up and down (weird I know). On these buses there's a man hanging on the door called "cobrador" who will collect the fare and shout the route while on the road. Those buses are usually called "voladoras" because they drive like maniacs and at high speeds, and have no scheduled stops so if you want to get out you either shout "déjame" (let me off) or you tell the cobrador who then will signal the driver to stop by knocking on the carrocery of the bus. Theme: Bus
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Another alternative when it comes to means of getting around. These are the most expensive and most dangerous. They're not as cheap as the buses or the share-a-taxis and they definitely do NOT have the same long routes.
Dominicans also use motoconchos for transporting stuff. Theme: Motorcycle
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Taxis in Santo Domingo, as well as the whole Dominican Republic, don't run by the meter. All serious companies have pretty much flat rates. How it works is that you call the company, ask for a cab to your home/hotel/place to pick you up, then when you come to your destination the driver calls the dispatch (called base amongst them) and they will give them the rate and all the parties in the car will hear it loud and clear.
Some reputable taxi companies I've used are:
Excelente taxi: (809) 593-8000.
Apolo taxi: (809) 537-0000. They also have limos for rent.
Taxi Anacaona: (809) 530-4800.
Aero taxi: (809) 688-3131, (809) 688-1212.
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I still dont get the picture, cause if we would have flown only the people who had to go to Puerto Plata would have been in a bus for 4 hours. When we came in the airport of Santa Domingo we had to fill in the document for getting in the Dominican Republic and getting out. Everybody on boart of the plane still had to do this, so can you imagine about 500 people in a row waiting to get this form and fill it in??? Leave a Comment Theme: Airplane
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