A group of us (20) went on the Higuey day trip. This included horse back riding, church cathedral visit, touring a working tobacco and chocolate farm, and finishes with time at the beach. The tour was great. What REALLY made this trip was our tour guide Mimi & driver Angel!! They were just fantastic. They went out of their way to schedule and coordinate time for our group to visit a local school & baseball team so we could donate some items. Which if your going I highly recommend this as your heart will overflow. Mimi is just a blessing as he’s funny, well spoken, and really made the trip!

As many 5-star reviews have already noted, visiting and playing with these adorable monkeys was beyond special and fun! Unique to be able to closely play with this type of cuddly squirrel monkey that genuinely look healthy and happy and well taken care of and free to roam. Took my 10 yr old daughter and 4 yr old son, and my daughter said it was the “best day of her life”.

There are some scheduling and details though to be aware of if you have kids like mine that get “tired/bored/hot” easily and want more details on timing of activities beforehand...

When they say approx. 5 hours for the monkeyland tour (i.e. no zip-line), that is from pickup to drop-off, as it includes the cacao/coffee making tour and transportation to/from. As noted below,
ours was 6 hours in total.

For the 9:30a monkey tour (our choices were 9:30a or 2:30p start), our air conditioned bus picked us up near the Westin at 7:05a. There was one pickup prior. We then met other A/C buses at a gas station where people got on their assigned open air safari bus - based on if seeing monkeys, cacao/coffee making, zip line, etc first.

The ride on the safari bus was great as we drove through villages and scenic areas. We got to the monkeyland welcome area around 9a for check in and group instruction from the guides. You get to spend about 30-45 minutes with the monkeys, while walking on trails and stopping at points to feed them seeds and fruits from the bowls handed out. And they have an area where they take pics of each group, and the guide taking pics gives you extra seeds to make sure there are monkeys playing with you in the pics. When you get back to the reception area, you look at the pics they took as a group and can tell the staff which pics you want printed out for $10 each. We bought a couple to supplement the 100s of pics we took on our own.

Then we got back in the open air safari bus at 10:30a and headed to the coffee/cacao tour. It’s a nice walk to diff parts of the area and very informative, but my kids had no interest and by this point were too hot and tired to enjoy. So wish there was an option to not go on this part, but that is the way they do it. One group does monkeys from 9:30-10:30a and other does cacao/coffee, and then switches.

At 11:30a, we took the open air safari back to that gas station, and then got on a different assigned A/C bus back to our hotel. We only had one other stop on the way back, so were home by 1pm.

Note then our pick up to drop off time was 6 hours, not 5. And can be longer if your hotel is located such that there are multiple stops beforehand. Would have been nice to set more realistic timing expectations for my daughter, hence this detailed review and hope this info helps with your family planning.

I had an amazing excursion from the cruise with this group. Frank our tour guide was hands down the best. I would have paid him extra money to take me around the island after the adventure if we would of had time. Frank was very good about giving us details on our adventure and also talked to us about the country and his family. It was great to learn some of the culture of the island. He took his time explaining things to us and telling us how they live on the island. I would do an adventure with this group again and hope that I get Frank.