For our second shore excursion on our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise, we’d picked to do the P&O excursion to Saona Island in the Dominican Republic.
It promised a full day with all the things we’d hoped for on a day trip in the Caribbean – boat rides, snorkelling, all food and drink catered and remote island beaches – and we weren’t disappointed.
We left the ship at 8.15am and made our way to the clearly sign-posted excursion meeting point.
While we do a mixture of independent excursions and P&O’s own ‘official’ excursions on our cruises, one big benefit of the P&O ones is that it’s very clear and simple where you need to go and what you need to do.
You may pay a premium when you book an excursion with P&O, but there’s no stress or uncertainty of having to find your own way around – you simply step off the ship, follow the shore excursion signs and step straight onto a bus without any hassle at all.
The bus soon set off for Bayahibe, the departure point for the speedboat leg of the tour over to Saona Island.
The tour guide ‘Rocky’ gave an entertaining commentary over the bus tannoy during the drive, which was only about 15-minutes or so, at which point we reached a beach where we got off and boarded a speedboat.
There were just under 60 people on our excursion (which is an extremely popular one with P&O and was booked up almost immediately on being released).
We all fitted comfortably on the boat, which made its way out to sea as the morning sun heated up, with a welcome sea breeze from the speeding boat.
We followed the Dominican Republic coastline, over crystal clear blue water, until we reached the first stop on the excursion – a ‘sandbank’ that sits between the Dominican Republic coast and the island of Saona.
At this point, the water is shallow (about waist deep) and you can get out of the boat and wade / swim around in the perfectly clear water, whilst Rocky the tour guide and the boat’s crew dished out rum and other drinks (all included in the price) from a floating ‘bar’ in the sea.
If you have snorkels / masks, it’s worth bringing them (none are supplied on the excursion) as there are tropical fish, starfish and even a few stingrays (small, friendly and harmless) swimming around the boat at the sandbank.
One of the boat’s crew was a professional photographer and he was wading around, photographing people with the stunning Caribbean backdrop, for photos which you could buy from him if you wanted to do so (they were decent photos so we did buy some as they made our own amateur holiday photos look pretty lame in comparison).
After about half an hour at the sandbank, we were back on board the boat and headed for the main destination of the excursion – Saona Island.
The boat pulled up at a sandy beach, where we climbed out and were lead through a small patch of “jungle” to the main beach area on Saona.
This was our first taste of the Caribbean as you imagine it to be. The pure white sand, the clear turquoise water, the coconut trees leaning over with a bright blue sky behind.
It was the kind of place we’d dreamed of coming to when we booked the cruise – and with only a few other excursions here at the same time as us, the beach was quiet enough to find plenty of secluded places to sit in the sun and swim in the warm sea.
The photographer was back and taking pictures if you wanted them – and a very decent lunch was being prepared that was all included in the cost, along with unlimited drinks – rum, beer, coffee and soft drinks.
We helped ourselves to lunch from the buffet at one of the beach bars – chicken, pork chops, rice, spaghetti, salad – and much more to choose from, then spent the rest of the time relaxing on loungers (all provided as part of the excursion) under the coconut trees.
We had about 3-hours enjoying the peace and beauty of Saona Island before we were rounded up to head back to the boat for the final leg of the excursion.
We got back on the speedboat, which took us just offshore where a catamaran was anchored – and climbed from the speedboat onto the catamaran, which set sail back to the Dominican Republic mainland on a journey of about an hour and a half or so.
This was a more relaxed journey – with the crew dishing out plenty of rum to anyone who wanted it, music playing over the speakers and the crew encouraging passengers to get up and dance with them.
We sat looking out over the Caribbean Sea as the catamaran sailed leisurely along, watching flying fish leaping out of the sea and flying through the air next to the boat.
Eventually arriving back at Bayahibe, we climbed onto another speedboat for the short trip (2-minutes or so) back to shore, where the bus was waiting to take us back to Arvia at the La Romana cruise terminal.
The final ‘all aboard’ time on Arvia was 5.30pm and we arrived back at 5.10pm, which was a bit close for comfort for our liking.
However, as it was the P&O official excursion to Saona Island, if you do happen to be late back to the ship, the ship is guaranteed to wait for you before leaving – unlike with an independent excursion, where there’s a risk you could be left behind if you miss departure time.
Because we like to avoid the risk of that ever happening, we always leave a good few hours’ margin for error when we’re doing our own thing, so we wouldn’t have wanted to do the Saona Beach Escape excursion independently, if arrival back to the ship was so close to the departure deadline.
This excursion was a brilliant day. We felt like we’d got to experience the real Caribbean as you imagine it to be, with the stunning natural beauty of the islands, hot, sunny weather – and ample amounts of food and drink all thrown in too.
Really well worth spending the money on and it gave us a day we’ll always remember. We definitely highly recommend it.