Saona Island is the Dominican Republic’s own slice of paradise — around 90% of the photographs of the country you have seen in brochures and on travel sites were taken right here. The island sits inside Cotubanamá National Park, named after the cave where one of the Taíno chiefs (caciques) once hid, which in turn carries the name of that very chief.
Like almost every significant discovery in the New World, Saona was found by Christopher Columbus. He named it after his friend Michele da Cuneo, who came from the Italian city of Savona, and appointed him the island’s first governor. Officially Saona is considered uninhabited, though there are in fact a few fishing settlements on it, which we will come back to. What is more curious is that Savona is formally recognised as Saona’s twin city — and according to legend, it was Savona that gifted the island a 226-panel solar power plant worth almost $400,000.
Saona, the Bounty island
Another popular Dominican legend says that the famous Bounty chocolate bar commercial was filmed here. Whether that is true is impossible to confirm — the brand does not disclose where its advertising was shot. What is certain is that Saona is the archetypal Caribbean paradise: powder-white sand, thick green palms and bright turquoise water. For any director trying to picture heaven on earth, it is close to ideal. And one thing is guaranteed: every tropical country has its own island where “the Bounty ad was filmed”.
Visiting Saona Island
A trip to Saona is one of the most popular excursions in the country, and every company tries to surprise its guests differently: some take a large, lively group across on a big catamaran, others use speedboats, others still charter yachts, and a few arrive by helicopter. Guests of DOMINICANA.PRO are the only ones with all four options open to them.
Each approach has its trade-offs. The catamaran and the helicopter, for instance, both leave you very little time on the island itself — just 1.5 to 2 hours. Price aside, a private yacht would be the perfect choice. In practice, the best-balanced option is the speedboat: it cuts the journey time several times over, which leaves you up to 5 hours on Saona.
