Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola, the island where European colonization of the Americas truly began. Santo Domingo, founded in 1496, is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Western Hemisphere - the first cathedral, the first university, the first hospital, the first paved street in the Americas are all here. Walk through the Zona Colonial and you are walking through the birthplace of the New World as Europeans knew it.

But the Dominican Republic is far more than history. This is the country that has exported more Major League Baseball players than any nation outside the United States - over 800 and counting. Merengue and bachata were both born here, and both became UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. The landscape ranges from the Caribbean's highest peak, Pico Duarte at 3,098 meters, to Lago Enriquillo, the lowest point in the Caribbean at 46 meters below sea level. There are world-class resorts in Punta Cana, wild surf on the north coast, and some of the best whale watching in the Atlantic off the Samana Peninsula. Ten million people live here with a joy and resilience forged by one of the most complex histories in the hemisphere.