VERY VERY Bad experience with Marivanna Tours

[wwb]

We booked the Los Haitises National Park as independent people thru Marivanna Tours, but were happy to join 6 others from Cruise Critic Meet and Greet (they booked with a different company called Caya......?? We were met by "Vladamir," our very sweet guide. He was sweet, but spoke very little English. We were walked down to "Bridge #1" where we boarded a small fiberglass looking motorized row boat. Hey, we all thought....where is the catamaran they told us we would have??? Vladamir collected the money first (smart, because I am not sure the 8 of us would have paid him after our miserable experience) and put it in the catamaran. We were hopeful that we were going to be transferred, but were told it was "too expensive." We sailed out into the open water and were shocked as to the speed, the waves and extreme bouncing we encountered for 37 minutes.My husband said it was pure torture! We arrived at the bird area and then went to a cave. My husband was too frightened to get out to see the caves because there was no handrails in the boat and he was afraid he would break and ankle on the wet benches. Transferring out of the boats was not very safe in our opinion. Two of the people did actually fall...one mother fell really hard while climbing back into the boat, as did another guy. Afterwards we headed to the beach, but encountered worse conditions(could we really get worse waves and bouncing????). It was now raining pretty hard and the canvas "roof" only covered about 60% of the 3 benches. It was a quick mutual decision to NOT GO to the beach, and rather to end this disasterous excursion. From all of the heavy bouncing several of us had to use a bathroom, but were told there was none. With some pleading, he found a bus station who had a toilet with no water, paper, etc. We used it anyway and then walked back to the tender.

All of us were experienced travelers and we all only use private tour companies. No one had ever been as disappointed and uncomfortable as what we encounted with Marivanna Tours (or whatever other name they use under the leadership of Julio/Jaime).

YOU ARE FOREWARNED about this bait and switch company. Furthermore, we were all concerned about the conditions of the life preservers and worried about our safety on this boat.

Wendy wwb