Punta Cana Airport to Cap Cana

Cap Cana sits south of Punta Cana, and it's a different animal entirely — newer, bigger, and built with a different goal in mind. Like Punta Cana, it's a private, gated development: there's no wandering in off the road, and access is limited to residents and resort guests. But where Punta Cana was designed as a quiet residential community, Cap Cana was designed to compete with it, and it shows. The development's master plan covers thousands of acres of former coastline, anchored by the Jack Nicklaus-designed Punta Espada golf course — ranked among the best in the Caribbean — and one of the region's largest marinas, built for yachts and deep-sea fishing.

Most of what you see in Cap Cana today is remarkably new. As recently as the late 2010s, there were only a couple of resorts here; the wave of hotels that now line Juanillo Beach — Eden Roc, Sanctuary, Secrets, the Hyatt Ziva and Zilara, and others — arrived within the past several years, with construction still ongoing. That timing matters for the beaches, too: Cap Cana is often cited as having some of the best sand and water in the country, in part because so much of it was left untouched until recently.

There's no supermarket in Cap Cana, and no nightlife outside the resorts — but what's inside them tends to be flashier and more social than what you'll find in Punta Cana. If Punta Cana is a quiet family community, Cap Cana is closer to a South Beach energy: newer money, bigger pools, later nights. It's also the one zone on this coast where you won't find a single hotel branding itself "Punta Cana" — here, the name on the door is Cap Cana, on purpose.