Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

The Santo Domingo Botanical Garden is a beautiful island of green situated in a sea of concrete.

When most people think of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, they come up with visions of blue ocean and white sandy beaches. Because the reason for our visit was largely work related, we had the opportunity to spend a longer time sharing the city with it’s nearly 4 million inhabitants. When walking the streets we found very few tourists. We did find a that many of the locals were welcoming and laid back. But this overall attitude does not carry over when there are wheels and a motor involved. We shared the sidewalk with motorcycles not wanting to fight the street traffic. And found that instead of yielding at stop signs the norm is to beep to warn oncoming traffic that you are heading on through.

With all of this chaos, the soothing expanse of land that has been transformed into a botanical garden was a welcome find.

The Santo Domingo Botanical Garden’s best known and most popular feature is the Japanese Garden. Wandering to the far end of the park to enjoy the scene there is well worth the walk.

There is also a cactus garden.

Several species of bamboo.

Gorgeous flowering trees.

And areas that are crawling with beautiful vines vying for sunlight.

There are also several ponds on the property complete with resident turtles.

It was a fantastic day and a welcome quiet relaxing day. Almost making up for the need to walk back, through all of that traffic. Ah well.

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