The Dominican south's unexpected sand dunes and salt flats — coastal desert landscapes between Santo Domingo and the Haitian border
Baní is a city of 130,000 in the Peravia province of the Dominican Republic's south coast, 65km west of Santo Domingo, and the gateway to Las Dunas de Baní — a coastal desert of wind-sculpted sand dunes, salt flats (Las Salinas de Baní), and mangrove lagoons on a peninsula jutting into the Caribbean that looks more like Namibia than the Caribbean. The salt flats at Las Salinas, where salt has been harvested since the colonial era, create a brilliant white landscape with pink flamingos and migratory wading birds. The area is almost entirely off the tourist circuit — a Dominican weekend destina…
Baní was founded in 1764 and is most famous in Dominican history as the birthplace of Máximo Gómez (1836–1905), the military commander who led both the Ten Years' War against Spain in Cuba (1868–78) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98) — a Baní-born general who became a Cuban national hero, with a central square in Havana named for him. The southern coastal region was developed for sugar cane cultivation during the colonial and early independence periods, and the salt industry at Las Salinas has been continuously operational since the 17th century, supplying salt for fish preservation…