Los Haitises National Park by bus: getting to Samana

Los Haitises by bus in five facts

1. The most common ways into the park are by sea, from Samana, Sanchez or Sabana de la Mar, according to the Ministry of Environment.
2. The bus we handle from Santo Domingo to Samana has 8 daily departures in its company's timetable, taking 2 h 45 to 5 h 30 depending on the departure, in the timetable checked on 3 October 2026.
3. There is no direct line from Punta Cana to Samana in our data: it is two buses with a change in Santo Domingo, about 7 hours by our estimate.
4. Sabana de la Mar is not a Guagualine destination.
5. We handle only the bus, from 19 USD per person from Santo Domingo. The boat into the park is a separate excursion.

What Los Haitises National Park is and what you see

According to the Ministry of Environment's park fact sheet, Haitises means high or mountainous land in the Taino language. It is a landscape of mogotes, limestone hills covered in forest between 40 and 380 metres high, hollow inside and full of caves. The region covers about 1,600 km² just south of the Samana peninsula, and the undated fact sheet gives about 600 as national park. The Ministry of Tourism page gives the park the full 1,600 km². The same fact sheet lists the public use area you visit: the Caño Hondo inlet, San Lorenzo Bay, the mangrove forests, the humid forest trail, the caves of La Arena, Willi, La Linea and San Gabriel, and Cayo de los Pajaros, the bird cay. The official Ministry of Tourism page adds that the park's caves hold the largest number of petroglyphs and pictographs in the country, that its cays are home to bird colonies and that you can spot the endangered Ridgway's hawk. Those are the public use area's highlights. What each trip includes is up to the operator.

Where the boats to Los Haitises leave from: Samana, Sanchez or Sabana de la Mar

The Ministry of Environment fact sheet gives three ways in by land. One runs from Santo Domingo through San Pedro de Macoris and Hato Mayor to Sabana de la Mar, on the south shore of the bay, and from there into the park by sea. The other two, along the Santo Domingo-Samana highway or the Duarte highway, reach Sanchez and Samana, on the north shore, and from those two towns you also enter by sea. The park administration office is in Sabana de la Mar. The fact sheet, which carries no date, also says every visit must be authorised in advance by the Ministry, and that arrangements are made at that local office, directly with the tour operators of Sanchez and Samana, or at the Ministry itself through its Vice Ministry of Protected Areas and Biodiversity. For anyone travelling by bus, Samana is the easiest gateway: it is where the Santo Domingo bus we handle ends.

The Santo Domingo to Samana bus: the timetable

According to the timetable the company publishes through its API, checked on 3 October 2026, there are 8 daily departures from its central Santo Domingo terminal to Santa Barbara de Samana: 07:00, 08:00, 09:30, 10:00, 13:00, 14:30, 16:00 and 16:30. The 08:00, 10:00, 14:30 and 16:30 take 2 hours 45 minutes and arrive at 10:45, 12:45, 17:15 and 19:15. The 07:00, 09:30, 13:00 and 16:00 take 5 and a half hours. That bus is run by Caribe Tours, and it is about 130 km. On the way back, from Samana to Santo Domingo, departures are at 07:00, 08:00, 09:00, 10:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00, and the 08:00, 10:00, 14:00 and 16:00 take 3 hours. With the first fast arrival at 10:45 and the last fast return at 16:00, a same day round trip from Santo Domingo with the boat in between is tight, so ask the excursion operator how long the trip lasts before you decide. Everything else about this route is in our guide to the Santo Domingo to Samana and Las Terrenas bus and on the Santo Domingo to Samana route page. That is the timetable on that date and it can change: the exact departure for your trip comes in your confirmation.

Los Haitises from Punta Cana: two buses and a night in Samana

There is no direct line from Punta Cana to Samana in our data. You take two buses with a change in Santo Domingo, about 330 km and about 7 hours in total by our estimate. With that travel time, a Los Haitises day trip from Punta Cana does not work by bus: the sensible plan is to sleep in Samana and do the boat trip on another day. Where you change buses and how the two legs fit together is explained in our guide to Punta Cana to Samana and Las Terrenas by bus, so we do not repeat it here. We handle both legs in one assisted booking from 29 USD per person.

Sabana de la Mar: not a Guagualine destination

Sabana de la Mar is the town on the south shore, with the park office, but it is not one of our routes: we do not handle any bus there, from Santo Domingo or from Punta Cana. If you choose to enter the park from that side, getting to the town is up to you. We do not handle the bay crossing either. The only dated source we can cite about a boat between Samana and Sabana de la Mar is a note from the Dominican Port Authority of 17 January 2023: when it reopened the public pier in Santa Barbara de Samana, it said the pier would be used for sea transport to Sabana de la Mar. We have no current source with times, fares or frequency for that crossing and cannot tell you whether it runs on the day you travel.

The boat trip to Los Haitises is booked separately

Guagualine handles only the bus. The boat to Los Haitises is an excursion you arrange separately, with an operator in Samana or Sanchez or through the park office in Sabana de la Mar, as the Ministry of Environment fact sheet explains. We do not give boat prices, times or durations because we found no dated official source, so ask the operator when you arrange it. Two facts from the same fact sheet help you pack: Los Haitises gets 1,900 to 2,000 mm of rain a year, among the highest totals in the country, and the average annual temperature is 24 to 26 degrees Celsius.

Sources and how we checked

What the park is, where you enter, the prior authorisation, the public use area, the rainfall and the temperature come from the Ministry of Environment's Los Haitises National Park fact sheet, which carries no date. There is an archived copy of that fact sheet from 20 May 2024. The caves with petroglyphs and pictographs, the bird cays and the Ridgway's hawk come from the official Ministry of Tourism page. Both were checked on 22 October 2026. The times come from the company's public timetable API, the same one its website uses, checked on 3 October 2026. The Samana pier fact comes from the Dominican Port Authority note of 17 January 2023. Distances and the duration from Punta Cana are our estimates. We are an independent intermediary with no agreement with the operators, and we are not the website of any transport company, of the park or of any public body.