Whale watching dream - I took the whale watching tour combined with Bacardi island with sunset Caribbean. I booked via Viator and had a great and personalized experience. I was picked up at my hotel in Boca chica, by a wonderful tour guide, Ibrahim. 3 hour drive to the harbor, pleasant breakfast at the hotel next to the marina. We boarded the catamaran with 100 of my newest friends from all over the world. Boat ride out into open ocean and 20’ surge. The tumultuous surge was amazing for prompting the whales to perform. Breaches all around the boat and school of dolphins to boot. Ibrahim stayed by my side for all activities and I felt like I had a body guard as well as new friend. Boat ride to Bacardi island was much easier on the way back, lunch was okay, typical souvenir market and beautiful beach to walk around. Back to the harbor and 3 hour ride back home. Even though it was a 14+ hour day it was throughly enjoyable and much of that was due to a great tour guide. Thanks for a great experience!!!

Whales and Barcardi Island! - Wow! The whales were really putting on a show for us! And lunch at Bacardi Island? Perfect! MamaJuana arranged for Alex to pick us up and drop us off at our condo. Alex is an excellent driver! He provided little tidbits of information along the way. We arrived to our destination early so he took us out on the walking bridge nearby! Having someone there that spoke English to guide us, insuring we understood everything and even taking photos for us made this one extremely enjoyable experience!

Whales, Walks, Beach and More! - Wow! The whales were really putting on a show for us! And lunch at Bacardi Island? Perfect! MamaJuana arranged for Alex to pick us up and drop us off at our condo. Alex is an excellent driver! He provided little tidbits of information along the way. We arrived to our destination early so he took us out on the walking bridge nearby! Having someone there that spoke English to guide us, insuring we understood everything and even taking photos for us made this one extremely enjoyable experience!

Samana Whale Watch--an adventure of a lifetime! - Excellent experience with a top notch guide who was fluent in both English and Spanish. We saw over a dozen whales and had a wonderful time on the island after--very good food for the luncheon and a great time on the beach after. We had people from 13 to 75 in our 3 generation family group and everyone had a top notch experience. The guide even suggested that we take motion sickness preventative medication and stopped at a pharmacy for us to do so. It was a good thing as the seas were quite rough on the day we went. Highly recommend this adventure of a lifetime!

Great adventure if you make it so - Alex our driver was the best. His English was near perfect and he seemed to truly enjoy meeting new people. The whales were a bit shy on our voyage but we did see them and we were fairly close. At lunch we met more people and had lots of laughs. I would not recommend this style boat for small children under 3. Best seats were on top but sun screen would be mandatory.

Unfortunately pretty... - Unfortunately pretty disappointing. Our driver was lovely and we had a nice private transfer to Samana. However, the actual boat tour had issues. Several people on our boat were being loud and obnoxious the entire time, blasting music from a speaker, singing, making “whale noises”, shouting. The boat operators never once told them to quiet down. It was like we were on a party boat. We saw a few whales from afar, but they all kept their distance from our boat despite going very close to all the other boats, which were completely silent. We stayed out only 30 minutes after glimpsing the whales, not an hour as stated, and then went to the beach location (which was extremely crowded) for 4+ hours, much longer than expected. Between the loud and obnoxious other guests and very short time with the whales, it wasn’t worth driving 3 hours each way from Santo Domingo.