Sosúa Bay is a horseshoe of calm, clear water protected by reef at both headlands — the best snorkelling and easiest diving on this coast, and a beach lined with vendors and small restaurants that fills with Dominican families at weekends.
The town's history is unlike anywhere else in the Caribbean. At the Évian conference of 1938, when country after country declined to take Jewish refugees from Europe, the Dominican Republic offered to accept up to 100,000. Some 700 arrived, settling here from 1940 on land granted by the Trujillo government — a gesture whose motives were not straightforwardly humanitarian, since the regime was explicitly interested in European immigration after its 1937 massacre of Haitians. The settlers founded the dairy and meat business that still operates, and the small synagogue and museum on Calle Dr Rosen tell the story plainly.
The reef is the other reason to stop: a dozen dive sites within a short boat ride, wall dives out at the drop-off, and water that stays clear when the coast further east is churned up. Cabarete is fifteen minutes east if you want the wind rather than the calm.