Chemin de découverte de l’île de Saona

This whole excursion was a nightmare from the start. First of all, the email I received said hotel pick-up was at 6:50am but the voucher said 7:40am. Luckily we were ready at 6:45 because the shuttle came at 7:10. Shortly after, we pulled over ON THE SIDE OF THE BUSY ROAD where another van picked up 2 other people from ours. WHAT?! How awkward and unsafe! Then we went to a 'port' where we got on a coach bus with a bunch of other people. Our leader, Jorge, was less than pleasant and had the enthusiasm of a rock. He spoke mostly in Spanish and would randomly translate what he was saying into English. What we managed to hear was that we'd be snorkeling in 2 spots, 1 of which is a place you can see starfish! About 45+ min later, we got to a port where there were hundreds of people trying to get on boats. We could see the catamarans out in the water and people getting on the 'speed boats' to be taken to them. After about 15 min of chaos, we were loaded up on our speedboat. We got about 100 yards off the shore and were bypassing the catamarans. I thought we were getting on one of them... NOPE! They stopped and started yelling at us to "hurry up" because we only had 20 min to snorkel. Huh? We just got on this boat, it's 9am and 74 degrees and now you want me to jump in the water with nothing around? Plus there are 3 other boats trying to let people snorkel too. Most of us stayed on and waited for the others to be done. Still on the speedboat, we went to a sandbar where dozens of other boats were floating and people were in the water. This was my favorite part of the trip. The photographer took some great pictures of us and the rum started flowing! We had fun. After a while, we climbed back on the speedboat and headed to Saona Island. When did we get to snorkel and see starfish you ask? We didn't! We got to Saona Island and literally sat around for several hours. I paid $25 to get my hair braided and our husbands played around a bit in the ocean. Eventually they served lunch which I opted not to risk eating. Good thing I didn't because my cousin got sick and was in bed/bathroom for over 24 hours. When we left the island, we FINALLY got on a catamaran. The boat took us back to the port and we got on the coach bus again and 45 min later were transferred into a little van to get shuttled back to our hotel. In the 11 hours this excursion took, 4 were spent in a bus/van and 3 were spent sitting at a picnic table doing nothing. I could write more, but it wont let me. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS!!!