La Romana, Dominican Republic: This was the most confusing port to research, in my opinion, since the Paradise is one of the first ships to visit it. At first the Carnival website said the port itself was Casa de Campo, so I wondered if that meant we would be able to just hang out at the resort. I called the resort and Carnival on 3 separate occasions and no one knew. After receiving the excursion costs from Carnival, I decided to do a little research and see if I could see the same sights for a lesser cost (which you can usually do). I found several agencies that offered the same tours, but got one confusing message from one of them that Carnival forbids its guests from taking any non-Carnival excursions. This sounded fishy to me, but rather than fight it, we just decided to use our on-board credit for an excursion. The best one seemed like the Saona Beach Catamaran, which actually combined 2 other excursions – the trip to Saona and the speedboats to La Piscina Natural (“natural pool”), for $85/person. The Paradise appeared to actually dock on Casa de Campo property, but I never saw the resort, just a locked gate leading to it; my guess is to use anything on the resort you would have to take one of the excursions that used their facilities. The big difference between this port and all the others I’ve been to is that it doesn’t dock anywhere near a city; it’s pretty isolated and there aren’t people crowded around waiting for you to sell you something. You get off the ship basically in a parking lot area from which the tour buses depart. Despite all the discouragement of Carnival in the pre-port talks, it is very possible to explore the island on your own. We later found out our tablemates got a cab from the parking lot to take them in to Santo Domingo. They said it was pretty easy; the one thing to look out for is that there is very little English spoken on the island (although sometimes I got the impression our tour guides understood more than they let on). We boarded a bus in the parking lot at the pier, and met our guide Jose, who has run several tours to Saona for the local resorts. He took us to a beach where vendors were waiting to sell us hats and Jose warned us we would need them to be protected from the sun. We decided to take our chances. There was a group of guides waiting for us that divided us up into canoe-like motorboats to take us out to the waiting catamaran for the sail to Saona. We started at around 9:30, and it was close to a 2-hour trip. That’s when they start with the open bar. Now, we have no problem with drinking, we just rarely do it (especially at 9:30 in the morning). But rather than the nice relaxing sail we had hoped for (since this was not marketed as a ‘party boat’ as some others were), we got loud music blasted in our ears and some very, very drunk obnoxious people. I didn’t mind the music at first, but for those of us trying to relax on the shady part at the back of the boat, it actually began to become painfully loud, and some of the songs had very explicit lyrics. Then, once everyone (except a few of us) had plenty to drink, the guides came around and plopped a do-rag on everyone’s head. I was actually trying to doze and the guide sat me up and tied it on, even when Shawn and I protested (in English and Spanish) that we did not want one. We gave up, not wanting to offend their “hospitality,” and then five minutes later the female guide came around collecting $5 per do-rag. We gave ours back to her but wondered how many other people had worn them and returned them. It was a pretty good little trick, since some people were pretty out of it by then and just forked over the cash. The other thing that turned us off was that the guides kept pouring drinks down the throats of two attractive college girls on the trip – now mind you, no one made them drink that much, but as they got drunker and drunker the guides at first tried dancing with them very suggestively, and as things progressed, got offensive in my opinion. If this had been guests doing this to each other, that’s thei r own business, but it was very unprofessional for guides to be doing this to guests. When we arrived at Saona, I cheered up a little – we were boated in to a totally isolated beach where a buffet was being prepared, and a line of lounge chairs lay under a row of beautiful palms. The water was kind of murky at the beach, but for people who wanted to play in the clear water further out, the guides took them out in a boat. At first I tried to return to my nap in the shade. It was nice for about 20 minutes, and then I heard people around me yelping about mosquitoes. I figured they were farther inland since generally mosquitoes don’t go near the ocean. But then I began to feel little stings and pricks, and was slapping them off of me left and right. I don’t know why they suddenly showed up, I suspect they were drawn by the buffet – but then the guests became the buffet! After making a small dent in the mosquito population, I gave up and headed for the water. Amazingly, they followed! These were hard-core mosquitoes! I had to go in all the way up to my neck, and still wave them off of my face. After about ten minutes, Jose called us up to lunch, and now that was an adventure! No one had thought to bring bug spray (since this was a beach trip, not a rainforest or river or something) and they ate us alive as we got our food. I dropped my plate three times trying to get them off of me. They were also all over our food. I hurriedly got myself some rice, fresh fruit, and a piece of grilled chicken and ran back out to the ocean. There were picnic tables but it was impossible to eat there. One girl wrapped herself up in clothing from head to toe and they still hovered around her bare hands and face, so most people ended up joining me in the water. Even then you had to look out for them. And if you’ve never tried it, it’s pretty hard to hold your plate and manage to eat while neck-deep in water, so I really didn’t eat all that much. Poor Shawn had at least 25 bites on his back and neck, and as we all began to compare bites, we found the winner from our group – this guy had close to 50 his torso! Be warned!! While this is a beautiful island, you will be eaten alive unless you bring spray, and I’m not even sure that will slow them down. We were supposed to stay at the island until 1, but there was a lot of grumbling and whining at this point, so as soon as lunch was over they let us board the speedboats for the trip to Piscina Natural. If you’ve never been, this is about halfway between the beach where we started and Saona. It’s an area of the ocean about 200 yards off the shore that is only 3-4 feet deep and very clear! So it’s very similar to a pool. I really enjoyed the speedboat trip out there, the guides would zigzag back and forth and we’d bounce in each other’s wake. They really did go pretty fast, it was a lot of fun as the three boats would race. Once at the pool, we all jumped out and had some fun playing with one of the guest’s Frisbees. Jose found a starfish and brought it over to let us touch. It was much spinier than I thought it would be, and the weirdest thing was, he had us touch a crack on its bottom while he held it under water. Little suction things came out to suck on your finger, which you could see when he turned it back over. That was a new experience! After about 30 minutes, several of us got back onto the speedboats. There really wasn’t a lot to do there other than swim, drink, and throw Frisbee, and if you hadn’t had a lot to drink, that wasn’t fun for a super-long time. We had to sit in the boats until 3 since we’d left Saona early while they kept playing and drinking. Finally we were back on the beach we’d started at around 3:20 where vendors waited with ice cream. Warning – the price of this ice cream varies depending on how much they see you have in your hand! We bought a cone for a buck and got back on the bus to be taken back to the Paradise. While I can’t say I didn’t have fun on this trip, the day was a little over-long for me, and I’m not sure it was worth $85 based on the fact that I drank only water and had a pitifully small lunch, and the mosquitoes made Saona more painful than pleasant. One of my suggestions to the cruise line is that they should offer two prices for the excursions that include an open bar, and not assume that everyone is going to drink – why should I, who had 2 waters, be charged the same price as someone who has a dozen alcoholic beverages? Maybe they could put a hand-stamp or something on people who haven’t paid for the bar, and then they can pay for any drinks they do want out-of-pocket. From this excursion I would say the best part is the speedboats and Natural Pool, which you can get for almost half the cost on the Speedboat excursion.