Review of Tour Samana with Terry Jan 2014

We are a couple in our late 30’s/early 40’s and were travelling with our 3 year old daughter off the Holland America Noordam. We signed up in advance for the low impact tour.

We are very seasoned travelers – usually independently and occasionally cruises. We are quite comfortable in developing countries and never felt unsafe in Samana. I also did not perceive the people to be “poor”. The homes we passed all had water tanks, electricity and people were well fed.

We were excited to go to a less common cruise port (we are not shoppers and could care less about the gem stores) and were eager to support a local tour operator and put some money into the local economy. That all being said this tour was awful, and expensive. Probably the worst tour I’ve ever been on.

Finding the tour group off the tender was easy as was going to the storefront to pay. We then doubled back to the pier to pick up some late passengers. We were in a large safari style open jeep – the seats were quite hard and uncomfortable.

We first went to the cigar rolling “factory” which was a roadside house with the cigar rolling equipment inside. My husband actually quite liked the sample cigar and bought 2 boxes - 1 for each of our Dads. We subsequently went around to the back yard to look at the local fruit trees that seemed to be of the usual variety one finds in Caribbean back yards. I thought perhaps I was just jaded – I lived in the Southern Caribbean for two years and so far the tour just didn’t seem unusual or unique to me. Kind of like we were just in someone’s yard.

Thomas was our tour guide and his English was difficult to understand – it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t his pronunciation but the fact that his stories went nowhere and made absolutely no sense. I asked my husband if he was able to follow was Thomas was saying and he said he was no more able to understand Thomas than me.

Our second stop was at the bread bakery. It was a walk up a steep driveway to a hut off a woman’s house. I was unclear what we were really supposed to glean from a woman making bread in a hut. There were about four children ages 2-4 there and our daughter quickly started to play with them and they were all super cute – at this point most of our tour started to take pictures of the kids playing together. We then went to the yard of the bread house to see coffee berries and Cacao growing and to have the roasting process explained in another meandering unintelligible way. My poor three year old had been so excited because before the tour I had told her we were going to see how chocolate was made and when she realized that had been the chocolate demo she was very distraught and kept asking when we would go to the “chocolate” factory.

We then drove ending the paved section of road onto gravel, potholed, very steep roads which were very uncomfortable in the hard seated open-air vehicle. At one point my daughter’s head slammed so hard against the back of the seat the whole truck could hear it and winced.

We eventually reached El Valle beach and had lunch. Lunch was typical food prepped where there was no running water. I’m fairly picky and the chicken and fish just didn’t appeal to me. I ate the pigeon peas and rice. My daughter again found some kids on the beach and they had a good time running on the beach. There were venders there selling jewelry which was not reflective of place (ie nothing unique that said oh, handmade in DR) and when I asked the price of a necklace it seemed expensive to me.

We then drove to the “typical house” where native food products were explained - and finally the chocolate making was described in more detail . The man describing things was quite informative but this was of course all a giant sales pitch. We sampled some fruit, mamajuana etc. Unfortunately the chocolate was made into hot chocolate and flavored with cinnamon and my daughter is allergic to cinnamon (this was not the tours fault) but she couldn’t even have the chocolate at the end of all this. Then everyone there tried to sell their wares.

We were at the trail to the waterfall. On Terry’s website it stated there would be children “helping” you to walk to the falls and to have small bills for tipping. On our way to the trail Thomas told us that we could say no thank you if we didn’t want help. The older women waiting for us were not children and they didn’t back off when told no thank you. They continued to grab elbows and hands. My 3 year old had been a trooper on this whole tour – it was hot, long, she banged her head, she never saw chocolate being made, she didn’t even get to drink the chocolate. She said to the woman “Don’t touch me”. The woman didn’t listen and kept trying to hold her hand. Well she was having any of it and started to yell “don’t hold my hand I only want to hold my Mommy’s hand.” Then the woman started to fan her with a hand held fan this started the “Don’t wave me”. I’m not sure what made my daughter so uncomfortable but she clearly did not want these people touching her and they didn’t listen to her at all (and her meaning and tone were clear even if there was a language barrier). It is interesting, my husband worries that my daughter is so friendly she would start chatting with and wonder off with anyone. This was the first time we ever saw her show some backbone and be really uncomfortable with someone so it was kind of nice to see she has some judgment. Once one is almost at the falls there is a wood planked suspension bridge that my daughter became afraid of so I had to carry her on the shaking suspension bridge – not fun and not what I would call low impact. We then hit the falls, which are not all that exciting, and there were more vendors there. We had to turn right around –no time to swim to race back up the trail and make our last tender to ship. On the very bumpy ride in reverse we stopped at one point at a viewpoint with everyone shouting just drive as we were concerned for missing our ship.

My Husband stated he felt like we just went to Terry’s buddies homes and then they tried to sell us stuff. I would advise people not to waste their time or money.