El Limón Waterfall and Cayo Levantado Full-Day Tour — Samaná Day Trip with Lunch

You step off the van where the road narrows and the sound changes — tires on pavement give way to horse hooves and a green hush. A short horseback ride threads through a recovering tropical forest, palms and thorny scrub opening to a high ridge that looks down on the river valley where El Limón runs like a promise. The horses leave you at a trailhead; from there a shady path and a set of wooden stairs dip toward a rock amphitheater where the waterfall arrives with a private kind of ferocity. Water barrels over limestone, carving pools you can swim into; spray cools the air and pushes the heat back toward the coast.