Amber Cove and Waterfalls Excursion

I am trying to Amber Cove and the DR for the first time and we read about the Damajaqua Cascades or 27 waterfalls. We will be arriving in Amber Cove in APril and we have from 9am to 4pm.

1. Has anyone down the waterfall tour??
   
2. What was the schedule?? For example what time did the tour start/what was the pickup time.
   
3. How many waterfalls did you do? 7 or 12?
   
4. Are you climbing up the falls (similar to Dunns River Falls in Jamaica) or I've seen video of people sliding down or jumping off the falls into pools below?
   
5. What time did you get back to the ship?
   
6. How many hours in total from pick up to drop off at the port did it take?
   
7. Is there time for Marysol tours (if we book through them) to give us a brief tour of the area as well??
   
8. Would you recommend the tour??
   

I know i have a lot of questions and whatever info you could provide would be great. As I mentioned this is our first time in the DR and want to do a tour that is fun, where we get to see the area and most importantly one that is safe so we were not sure if we should also book directly through Carnival.

Thanks so much.

http://www.iguanamama.com/shore-excursions.html

This is another website I found for waterfall tours.

We don't sail until May 21 so can't help with info now.

We were looking at a cruise to the port possibly.

We only wanted to go here if we could do this tour. We couldn't find much information on it at the time so we chose to sail the breeze and just got back last week.

I am following this because if we book another cruise this is a consideration.

I was just reading a review and someone just went here.

Here is the link to their review: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2285914&page=4

It looks like they used the company annabell08 mentioned

I booked with Marysol Tours. Unfortunately we were unable to dock because of wind (Carnival Valor), so while I can't vouch for the actual excursion, it does get great reviews on trip advisor, and the owner of the company reached out to me immediately and refunded my entire purchase price that day.

We just did the waterfall tour last week with Marysol Tours. It was definitely our favorite excursion and I highly recommend Marysol. Our tour guide, Elvis, was fabulous! It was beautiful but it was also strenuous. We did 7 falls and you basically climb, swim, get hoisted and pushed up the falls (which are rapidly running falls) before sliding and/or jumping back down. Not an easy task with the recent rain they just had. Our waterfall guides definitely worked overtime that day! There were times I thought we wouldn't all make it, but we did! We chose 7 because we thought it would be easier, but in retrospect, 12 may have been a better option. If you do 12, my understanding is that the initial hike is longer but it is on an uphill wooded path that leads you to the top of the falls and then you just go down from there. No swimming upstream. That being said, our group ranged in age from 15-60ish of varying athletic abilities. It was hard, but we all loved it and would go back in a heartbeat!