"Few images evoke paradise like an untouched island of white-sand beaches lined with palm trees swaying in a tropical breeze and lapped by a crystal-clear sea. Cayo Levantado, in Samaná Bay in the northeastern part of the Dominican Republic, is exactly that sort of place—well, except for the “untouched” part. Travelers to the island will find a new five-star hotel, the Cayo Levantado Resort, waiting for them. It offers a unique vacation experience by combining a focus on both wellness and hedonism at one property. Why book? It’s not often that you can stay on an island famous from an advertising campaign. Cayo Levantado, however, was the idyllic setting for an iconic Bacardi commercial featuring a group of castaways played by tanned models dancing on a beach—while also building makeshift shelters—of a sun-kissed island where, of course, rum cocktails flowed freely. The same island, the same white beaches, and the same turquoise sea in the ad now await you, but instead of having to make your own hut out of palm fronds and survive on rum shots, you’ll find spectacular rooms and villas with plunge pools, two larger resort pools, haute cuisine restaurants, and a wellness space that will likely set the standard for other Caribbean resorts. One thing the real-life island shares with its on-screen counterpart is that you’ll find Bacardi drinks being poured—along with many other premium brands of rum and other liquors—at a mixology lab dedicated to the art of inventing delicious cocktails. Moving beyond the spirited offerings, at this resort you’ll soon get the feeling that something new and different is brewing. Cayo Levantado is not just a hotel, but a new concept where a focus on wellness and emotional and mental health are as important as the typical pleasures one expects to enjoy at high-end hotels. Personalized nutrition programs, chakra meditation sessions, aerial yoga, relaxation sessions with Tibetan singing bowls, personal improvement workshops, and activities dedicated to fostering a connection with the island’s lush natural environment are just some of the offerings at this all-inclusive for the 21 st century. Another distinguishing aspect of this small island of less than 250 acres is that, unlike some tourist enclaves that exclude locals, Cayo Levantado is a favorite spot for the residents of Samaná. Boatloads of day trippers arrive at the public part of the beach every morning. As the day progresses colorful bars pour beer and piña coladas to the rhythm of merengue and bachata in a 100% Dominican atmosphere that is a highlight of a visit to the island. At four in the afternoon the hustle and bustle begins to quiet as day visitors start to leave (only guests at the Cayo Levantado Resort can stay overnight as there are no other accommodations on the island). A silence takes hold and the sunsets are reserved for the lucky few. The same is true of the sunrises, paired with warm turquoise waters and a postcard-perfect setting, as the first boats typically don’t arrive until around ten in the morning. Set the scene As you walk along the charming wooden pier to the boat that will take you to Cayo Levantado, you will begin to get a sense that what awaits you on the other side must be something special. While paradise islands in novels and films are typically remote specks in the middle of the ocean, getting to Cayo Levantado doesn’t require that you embark on a long voyage. Instead you only have to enjoy a pleasant ten-minute boat ride. As the boat approaches the island and the sea turns from dark blue to turquoise, you’ll likely be struck by the imposing Victorian architecture of the hotel, built of pristine white wood and crowned with blue roofs. Numerous balconies, eaves, and gables are the hallmarks of the West Indian gingerbread structures to which the hotel pays homage. The resort incorporated an existing building that housed another hotel from the same group, Bahia Principe, but the current property has little in common with its predecessor. Instead, it has been completely transformed into a true luxury resort, something that is clear from the moment you enter the huge reception area and a personal ambassador welcomes you, explains everything you need to know about the hotel, and provides you with a rope-and-wood bracelet with a magnetic strip that serves both as a key to your room and a contactless card for all payment services. During your stay, your ambassador will always be at your service, just a WhatsApp call or text away. The rooms The hotel sits on 35 acres of landscaped grounds and has 219 rooms divided between the main building, villas (hidden among the lush plantings), and rooms on the beach. The decor varies: More tropical and colorful in the rooms set amid the giant ficuses, palm trees, and climbing tropical vines, and more minimalist, with marine motifs, in the rooms overlooking the Caribbean. Regardless of their different styles, an abundance of space is the common denominator. The smallest category of rooms (junior suites) measure 580 square feet while the largest, the spectacular Signatura Villa, is over 2,700 square feet. Most of them have views of the sea, which varies in color—a vibrant turquoise in front of the beach and the pier and an almost snakeskin-like pattern in front of Samaná Bay, thanks to the shadows cast by the coral reefs. Strolling along the paths planted with lush vegetation is the best way to get to know the resort. At its heart is the Yubarta wellness area with a huge pool, a series of palapas, and even its own cenote. While the beach is located at the bottom of a steep slope below the resort, an evocative wooden elevator brings you to sea level. The beautiful free-form pool with its own little islet gets gradually deeper at the end alongside the beach. There are hammocks, sun loungers shaded by trees, and an inviting beach bar—Jaiba—where you can order a tropical cocktail. Atmosphere and service The Cayo Levantado Resort marks a turning point for the Spanish Grupo Piñero hotels. This new approach to an all-inclusive offering has four pillars: responsible luxury, sustainability, healthy nutritional offerings, and spiritual well-being. The hope is that this ambitious project will have an impact that extends beyond one’s stay at the resort. The program encourages guests to choose a routine that best suits their way of being and their particular goals at the moment of their visit. The all-inclusive rate includes a variety of activities and nutritional offerings tailored to each guest. Other services, like activities and personalized consultations with nutritionists and trainers in the Yubarta wellness area, are offered at an additional cost as part of programs designed for stays of three, five, and seven days. The wellness offerings are themed around four different paths—the four R's: Restore, Relax, Renew, and Refresh. The intense Refresh program, for example, offers a boot camp under the guidance of a personal trainer and includes aerial yoga classes. Nati, the resort’s nutritionist, recommended a diet rich in complex carbohydrates and proteins for me and pointed out some dishes on the resort’s menus that best meet those requirements: A high-protein brioche was a sweet option while a wild rice and beef dish was a more substantial one. Exercise is not my favorite activity and so I opted for the Relax path. Spa sessions, massages accompanied by Tibetan singing bowls, and yoga sessions were paired with a diet focused on promoting serotonin production. A detox smoothie with papaya, basil, and coconut water was offered as I embarked on this path while dishes rich in quality fats were suggested to avoid spikes in my blood-sugar levels. Even just hearing about the dishes tailored to my chosen path made me feel more relaxed. The nutrition and wellness paths are, of course, only options provided to make your stay on the island more enriching. They are not required of any guest. If your idea of a vacation is based on a different four pillars of a classic seaside holiday—the beach, a pool, a good book, and a chaise as your base to enjoy it all—the hotel's facilities with its two pools, a private beach, and all forms of hammocks and poolside sun loungers give you all the tools you need to blaze your own path. The food When it comes to its gastronomic offerings, Cayo Levantado again breaks with the expectations we have of all-inclusive resorts. The property has six different restaurants. The culinary center is the Palma Real restaurant where breakfasts feature nine different food stations. Salads and tropical fruits are served in wooden bowls, there are 10 different varieties of breads, and the charcuterie selection of meats and cheeses will impress even the most discriminating French guests. Other stations serve Brazilian steaks and roast pork, while the sushi bar was my favorite with bluefin tuna, salmon, and cod sashimi. Some cuts of fish are also smoked onsite, creating an aroma that can then be savored in every bite. Another of the restaurants, the open-air Santa Yuca, has wooden crates filled with vegetables and fruits in the style of an organic grocery store. All that produce is used for its juice bar and the venue is the one that perhaps best embodies the slow-food and responsible nutrition philosophy at the heart of the culinary offerings. The dishes are carefully prepared using local ingredients and include the surprising grilled watermelon salad with avocado cream and arugula, the lamb ceviche with mango vinaigrette, and the poached lobster with lemon risotto and blueberry foam. After enjoying my first meal at this elevated gastronomic restaurant, I was already looking forward to dinner. I found myself wondering if there wasn’t a way to create a fifth path, perhaps with the name “Savor,” that would provide an excuse to indulge daily at each of the resort’s restaurants. When night arrived, I went to Carey, a restaurant next to the beach, where I could hear the waves lapping the shore and the smell of the sea was in the air. At this Peruvian-Japanese fusion restaurant, I started with steamed rice rolls with pineapple shavings and then moved on to a dish of cod with a yellow chili and miso sauce. During the course of my stay, I also tried the two fine dining restaurants (both have an additional cost beyond the all-inclusive rate), Senda and Manaya. The former serves gourmet takes on Dominican dishes. The journey began with a small-bites tasting before I sat down at my table—a tunnel formed by tree branches led the way. After I was seated, a seven-course tasting creatively paid homage to traditional Dominican cuisine with nods to the different regions of the country. A braised onion broth was inspired by the Bonao Valley, while a fig ceviche with a mandarin leche de tigre incorporated flavors from Samaná. The De Cabo a Rabo (in English, roughly, “from end to end”), included beef tongue, tail, heart, and ribs all served on a tray made of cow horn (the name of the dish, of course, provided a clue about what to expect). The next day, my final dinner was at the stylish Manaya restaurant. The focus of this favorite of carnivores is clear as soon as you walk in and pass a large display case of meats with bone-in ribeyes, Kurobata pork, Kobe beef, and a succulent cut of Rubia Gallega. In front of that showcase of meats, wooden shelves had an assortment of ingredients that allow guests to create their own individual seasonings before the meat is passed on to the grill master who will cook it to exactly the right temperature based on your preferences. Seated at a table in this restaurant that is a celebration of excellent meat, with a glass of Roda Reserva in hand, I was overwhelmed at the roughly 175 choices on the wine list, including some of the best bottles in the world, such as the Vega Sicilia Reserva Especial, Château Mouton Rothschild, and the extravagant Petrus. It is an oenophile’s dream to find a wine list this extensive on a speck of an island in the Caribbean. The area Located just over 100 miles from the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, and only three miles from Samaná, Cayo Levantado is the site of an incredible natural spectacle each year. From January to March, around 2,000 humpback whales leave the cold waters of the Atlantic for the warmth of the Caribbean and come to this bay to mate and give birth to their calves. Outside of humpback whale season, year-round highlights include the spectacular Haitises National Park, which justifies leaving Cayo Levantado at least for a short while on one of the excursions offered by the resort. Boats depart at 8 a.m. in order to get to the park before the tourists arriving from Samaná. En route during the 40-minute crossing, a local guide and a biologist provide an overview of the flora and fauna of the park. It’s not uncommon to spot pods of dolphins during the journey and before long the rounded rock formations known as mogotes will appear on the horizon. With some of them measuring over 130 feet tall, they appear as if they were floating in the middle of the sea. The park is a remarkable collection of bays, estuaries, beaches, mangroves, and huge caves with ancient Taino paintings on their walls. With a storm approaching during our visit—the park’s ecosystem is among the rainiest in the Caribbean—we entered the 2,000-foot-long Cueva de la Línea, illuminated by sunlight that streams through huge openings in the cave’s rock walls. More than 950 paintings have been documented in this cave, including the emblematic pictographic painting of the Shaman. After our visit to the cave, the ship next dropped anchor in a bay flanked by mogotes where there was a remarkable sense of peace and solitude. A lunch of salads, wraps, and natural juices gave us the energy needed to get in kayaks and silently explore the mangroves, after the rain stopped. Wellness Yubarta (the name means “humpback whale” in Taino) is the spectacular wellness space at the heart of the resort, one that aspires to set a new standard for the region. A bamboo archway invites guests to enter the complex designed to promote personal wellness, encourage a pursuit of balance in our lives, and facilitate a sense of harmony with the environment. Yubarta includes a huge pool in the shape of, yes, a whale that is flanked by palm trees, a meditation space, two fitness studios, and a nature path. I am led on a tour of Yubarta by Nicolás Apelt, the curator of the space and a graduate in ontological coaching, a Gestalt therapist, and the author of the book Reflections of a Mental Spirit , who has led workshops and retreats in 19 countries. He shows me the five palapas used for activities and workshops focused on wellness and personal discovery, the botanical garden, and even a cave that is part of the wellness area. “Cayo Levantado has given me the opportunity to put into practice all this knowledge I have accumulated over the years in a place created from scratch with the intention of being focused on wellness,” he says. As I write this review, the details of another section of Yubarta are being finalized. In the floor of a palapa, I find bits of quartz stones that have been incorporated into the building to facilitate the flow of energy. I close my eyes and imagine this space functioning as an oasis of calm where mindful plunges in the cenote, tantra sessions, chakra meditation, shamanic cleansings, massages to the sound of Tibetan singing bowls, and tours of the botanical garden elevate the concept of wellness and personal development. Sustainability Sustainability is one of the pillars of the Cayo Levantado project, protecting the island's delicate ecosystem and preserving its natural environment. A number of invasive species have been eliminated and at the same time more than 700 endemic species have been reintroduced. In conjunction with local NGOs, the hotel has several projects underway to restore and conserve the coral reefs surrounding the island. The resort has solar panels and a biogas system to produce energy from waste, as well as its own water treatment plant. You can literally feel the participation of the local community on your own skin when you apply the coconut body cream and mango scrub provided in beautiful coconut-shell containers. Provided as an amenity for guests, they are produced by a local women's association, ASOMUJA. Anything left to mention? Urbanites will appreciate a bit of café culture when they stroll through the hotel courtyard and find a cozy specialty café, La Molienda. With its small tables on the front porch of a little wooden house, guests can sip a macchiato made with local organic coffee accompanied by a freshly baked croissant. It’s an unexpected luxury on a tiny Caribbean island." - Rafael Estefanía, John Newton
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