Authentic Samana Tour: Beach and Waterfall Day Trip from Punta Cana

This is a full day filled with adventure! You take a bus ride to the town of Miches, it's about an hour and a half from Punta Cana and then you take a catamaran to Santa Barbara. Once there you get on a safari bus that takes you around the town of Santa Barbara. It is so nice to see the houses and the people. You get a small glimpse into how they live. The bus then takes you out to the ranch where you gather under a small pavilion and the locals teach you about cocoa and how they make Mama Juana. There are also vendors there selling jewelry, carved wood pieces, cigars, alcohol and more. Highly recommend bringing plenty of cash. Afterwards you go to pick up your horse. Each horse has a person walking with it. You will have someone walking next to you the whole time while you ride. My calf got rubbed a little raw in one area due to the stirrups rubbing against them. So I would recommend bringing a pair of pants with you or high socks. It happened to my husband as well. It was about a 30-40 minute horse ride. The horse ride can be a little scary if it is your first time. There are a lot of rocks and they go down hill quite a bit. They also will gallop or run if you let them. The guides with us were all very friendly but most do not speak English. So, the horses drop you off at the top of a hill and you have to take stairs all the way down to the waterfall. There are a lot of them and remember you have to walk back up those stairs. The waterfall is gorgeous! There are people around with parrots and they have you hold them while they take pictures of you with your phone. The gentleman who took our photos took a lot and only asked for a tip. The water was cold, but felt fine once you got into it. We spent about 30 minutes there and then headed back. Heading back meant walking up the stairs and another horse ride. This was not as much fun because by then I was hurting. But overall it was fine. We dropped the horses back off at the ranch and then took our buses back into the town of Santa Barbara, where we had a delicious Dominican lunch at El Timon Restaurant. Afterwards we took a catamaran to Bacardi Island. Again, I would highly recommend bringing cash because there were a lot of vendors there, as well. The island was beautiful and we got to spend over an hour on it. We left the island around 4:30 pm and got back on the catamaran to head to Miches which is about a 30 minute boat ride. They offer rum and other soft drinks on the ride back. Once you get to Miches, you get back on the bus and head back to your hotel. Overall, we had a great experience. I would say it is about four and a half stars. The horseback riding was uncomfortable for me, but again, the rest of the trip was great.

This tour was great! Beautiful beach, waterfall and lovely horse tour. Papa George was our tour guide and he was great. I bought tea and honey to bring home and just tried it, so tasty. Only downfall was the local contact trying to ensure everything was confirmed the day before, they never called back. I had to call three different numbers to try to confirm I was all set and wasted over an hour trying to get these numbers. If you like rum that really is the only alcohol option we had. Draft beer on the beach for just the hour we were there.

Highly recommend this trip. Although it is a very long ride for Punta Cana to the boat, everything else was great. Met lots of locals and had plenty of time at the waterfall. All the workers and tour guides were awesome.

Quite simply the poorest value for money day trip that one can imagine. I'm a simple Pearson, ham and cheese kind a guy. But my expectations for this trip were high. Food provided was awful, cold, uncovered, swarmed with flies, "horse" back ride was a torture for the animals, tour guide was lovely tho.