Southern Caribbean Cruise: La Ramona Dominican Republic

Everything I read about this port was that it was ugly, industrial, and nothing to do. A lot of that is true – it was ugly to pull up to the industrial port and see factories blowing tons of black smoke into the air. I booked an excursion through an outside company called Seavis. They are a bunch of people from Holland who moved to DR and created this company. It is run by them.

We took a taxi to Bayahibe. I would have liked to have seen more of Bayahibe – I have read a lot about it. The driver told us that La Ramona is known for sugar exportation.

There are tons of peddlers there selling hats, bags, underwater cameras, etc. They try over and over and OVER again to sell to you. Seriously once you say no once they come back at least 20 more times each one. You might have said no to one of them and right behind him comes the next one trying to sell to you. They kept calling us “family”. “Family buy this hat.” “sister buy this bag.” It was annoying but sort of comical. It was quite talented how they could carry so much stuff on one person. They had their shoulders covered with bags,  each arm would be holding a stack of product, around there neck would be stuff, and then on their head would be about 20 hats.

We boarded a speed boat that took us on a wild ride by some caves where we learned about the Taino Indians and about the importance of the caves as well as about the founding of DR. We rode through some mangroves as well and they talked about how all the people that have boats bring their boats out to the mangroves for a few days until the large storms pass by.

We then were taken to Saona Island where we had beach time, could snorkel, had a Dominican buffet, and all the drinks that we wanted. Saona island is a beautiful place and has 5,000 guests/day!!!  I went snorkeling and found lobster, some really pretty coral growing on a broken pier, and even a star fish. I swam down really deep and picked up the star fish and then brought it to shore so others could take pictures before I put it back where I found it.

We were there for 3 hours. Then we went to the natural pool area which is basically a bunch of sand bar type things where tons of star fish are. We took more pictures and headed back.

 It was a really nice day. It was a great deal too compared to doing something sort of similar through Carnival. Carnival charged $40 more per person  to take a speed boat to the island and if there was time they would take you to the natural pools. There excursion lasted only 2-3 hours and didn’t include snorkel equipment, drinks, food, etc. Ours went from 9 AM – 3PM.