Dominican Republic Amber
The Dominican Republic has the destinction of having one of the two most extensive deposits of amber in the world, the other being the Baltic Sea area. Classified as a gem, amber is actually the fossilized resin of extinct species of trees. The source of Dominican amber was the leguminous tree Hymenaea or Algarrobo. Millions of years ago as these trees toppled and were carried by river systems to the coastal areas, their resins became covered with silt. Eventually this sediment hardened to rock and the resin hardened to amber. It takes a minimum of twenty-five million years for amber to form, and though the oldest discovered so far is dated at eighty million years, the oldest Dominican amber dates between thirty-five to forty million years. There are three main areas on the island where amber is mined, but the oldest and hardest comes from La Cumbre in the Central Mountain Range between Santiago and Puerto Plata. 
Amber is mainly valued for its inclusions of fossilized insects, plants, worms, vertebrates, feathers, mushroom caps, animal hair, eggs, flowers, leaves, etc. - the list is varied and endless. Most inclusions are quite small, however the value raises considerably the larger the piece of amber and the rarer the inclusion. The colour of amber varies from various shades of yellow, orange, and even to green, blue, and purple. Blue amber is especially sought after and is one of the rarest to come by, therefore it too is highly valued. The blue colour is not due to the pigmentation in the stone, but from flourescence when exposed to ultra-violet light which is why these colours will appear pronounced when reflected in sunlight. Amber can be delicate in that drastic changes in temperature can cause it to fracture, and it will often change to a darker colour and develop surface cracks after a few years of exposure to light. 
A variety of substances has been used over the years to make imitation ambar, such as epoxy resins, plastics, celluloid, polyesters, to name a few, but true amber is distinguishable by its melting temperature, burning ordor, hardness, fluorescence, among many other factors. A simple test to determine if a piece is fake or real is to add about five tablespoons of salt to a glass of water. True amber will float but plastic will not.Dominican Republic Larimar
In the province of Barahona, in the southwestern region of the Dominican Republic, lies a true jewel of the Caribbean. Home to a rare, semi-precious stone known as Larimar, this area has the distinction of being the only place in the world to have this unique resource.
Though first discovered in the early 19th century, it wasn't until 1974 that the stone became known through the findings of Norman Rilling, a member of the US Peace Corps, along with a local Dominican geologist, Miguel Mendez. In the geology world this beautiful turquoise blue stone is identified as "pectolite", but the name Larimar was derived from the first three letters of Senor Mendez's daughter, Larissa, along with the Spanish word for sea, which is "mar". Thus "Lar-i-mar".
The volcanic activity that formed the beginnings of our island around 100 million years ago, brought about the chemical and mineral components that formed the crystallization of this deep buried gem material. Now mined from the naturally occurring shafts of dead volcanic openings, these rocks of blue pectolite are cut and polished into a variety of beautiful Dominican Larimar jewelry. Their colour ranges from the palest sea blue-green to brilliant turquoise, and no two pieces are exactly alike. Larimar is also known as the Dolphin Stone and sometimes as the Atlantis stone.
