We went to Catalina Island for our second full-day excursion in the Dominican Republic. We arranged the tour for this through Dominican Quest's website, but the tour operator was Saona Dreams. The Saona Dreams page for the Catalina Snorkeling from BAYAHIBE tour provides a high-level overview of this tour, the Dominican Quest page offers more details, and I add a few more details in this blog post.
We had a short ride on a large bus from our resort in Bayahibe to the marina in Bayahibe. Along the way, we picked up fellow Saona Dreams tours participants from other Bayahibe resorts near us. The bus was on time for our departure and the short bus ride was pleasant enough, but things were a bit chaotic after we got off the bus as Bayahibe's marina. There were lots of tourists going on various tours in the same mass of people. While things were sorted out, locals with large and small iguanas came by and offered the tourists the opportunity to take photographs of their family members or friends holding the iguanas or with the iguanas on their shoulders and heads. Payment for this service was strongly recommended by these men after the posing with iguanas was complete.
Everything did seem to get sorted out of the seeming chaos and we soon were wearing the wristbands for the same Cotubanamá National Park (formerly Parque Nacional del Este or National Park of the East) that we wore the previous day for our excursion to Saona Island because both islands lie within that vast and diverse national park.
We rode a small boat from the beach at Bayahibe to the catamaran. Once on the catamaran, we sailed toward Catalina Island. The experience on the catamaran was very different from the previous day's speedboat experience. The catamaran moved much more slowly, was roomier, and had two restrooms on board (more important for the long trips to and from Catalina Island). The slower movement and greater mobility allowed for a few people to practice dancing with merengue y bachata and this would be an easier trip for individuals with back problems. That stated, I preferred the speedboat because it fit my personal taste better; I am more interested in getting to these island destinations and the speedboat gets you there quicker. However, different people will prefer one or the other for different reasons and it was nice to experience both.
Our first stop on the Catalina Island snorkeling tour was one hour (that seemed to go much more quickly than that) at "The Wall." For snorkeling, this spot reminded me of Molokini in Maui, Hawaii. Both spots have significant clarity, in part due to lack of a traditional beach and with less sand being stirred up and brought back into the ocean by the waves. In both spots, the boat did not "dock," but instead set anchor in water significantly deeper than a person's height.
From "The Wall," we went by catamaran to a gorgeous beach on Catalina Island. We ate a grilled lunch there and enjoyed the almost-too-good-to-be-true views and then enjoyed snorkeling in the extremely clear water above Caribbean sea bottom of white sand between the reef and exterior corals. The views from the beach are stunning and the snorkeling is easy and interesting.
We loved our day on Catalina Island, but it ended up being far more costly than I originally anticipated because I lost my GoPro while snorkeling near "the Wall" and my mobile telephone got just a bit of salt water on it, but that was enough to make it not turn on anymore. Still, it was a great excursion and a great day. The photographs taken during the excursion and sold to us seemed pricey, but I decided to pay the requested price given the loss of my phone and my GoPro on this excursion.
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