Del Este

Del Este National Park, today officially named Cotubanamá National Park, was established in 1975 at the south-eastern tip of the Dominican Republic and protects some 791 km² taking in a limestone peninsula, Saona Island and the surrounding waters.

The ground is raised coralline limestone, practically without surface watercourses, covered in dry and semi-humid forest and riddled with a karst system of caves and cenotes. The coast alternates low cliffs, beaches and mangroves, and the waters hold seagrass meadows and reefs with Antillean manatee, turtles and dolphins.

Its archaeological value is of the first order. The park's caves, in particular José María and Panchito, preserve one of the most important bodies of Taíno rock art in the Caribbean, with more than one thousand two hundred pictographs depicting ritual scenes, animals and, in some cases, the arrival of the Europeans, which makes them an exceptional record of the moment of contact. The park's present name honours the cacique Cotubanamá, who led the Taíno resistance in this region and was executed in 1504.