Scuba in Samana?

[swatem]

We will be on the October 17 cruise with Norweigen which stops in Samana. None of the excursions look interesting so I was looking for a dive shop that works with cruise passenger. No luck so far, alot of the sites are in spanish with no english translation and I don't want the same language barrier when diving. The others won't respond to e-mails. Anyone have any ideas or experience with dive shops in Samana? Thanks.

[The Flying Pirate]

We were in Samana last spring and it was wonderful. There were several of us on board that were scuba divers but none of us dove. We decided to do the Mangrove tour and beach day and it worked out really well. The beach they took us too is great for snorkeling, but pretty shallow so you wouldn't get much more by scuba diving the same site. When we were on the island for the beach break we asked the locals and they said the same thing, not many people scuba the area. There is a shallow reef and if you go further out there are a lot of large starfish on the bottom.

 

The mangrove tour was actually much more interesting than we thought it would be. They take you across the bay in a speedboat and then tour the national park, with stops at a couple of caves. It was a very good excursion. Then they dropped us at the beach so we could snorkel after.