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Portobelo Day Trips

$ 139.00 – $ 215.00

This is a tour, not a one-way public bus.

Select the number of persons traveling (minimum 2).

For a full description of the tour, see the Description section below.

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  • The quantity must be 2 or more
SKU: SABT6739-1 Categories: ,

Description

About the tour

Edwin Bermudez, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Historic Portobelo, dating back to 1597, and the center of battles between pirates and conquistadors, has a lot of stories to tell and even more beautiful sea treasures to reveal.

Choose which tour suits your spirit of adventure.

All tours pick you up from your hotel in Panama City and return you there the same day.

Option 1: Portobelo history, fort, and Agua Clara locks

Focused on walking through over 400 years of history and the amazing civil engineering feats of recent history, come along for a tour of Portobelo and the Agua Clara Locks.

We’ll pick you up from your hotel in Panama City at 8:00 a.m. and head first to the Agua Clara Visitor Centre. There you’ll be introduced to the famous locks of the Panama Canal, a remarkable achievement that took many years and lives to make international shipping do the impossible.

After watching ships pass through the locks, we’ll go next to Portobelo to visit the swashbuckling Fort San Lorenzo, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You’ll listen to pirate stories while exploring the colonial fortifications and their cannons still in place to this day.

Finally, we’ll return to Panama City and drop you off at your hotel. The estimated arrival time is 6 hours after pickup.

Included are all round-trip transportation, an English-speaking guide, admission fees, and a snack.

Option 2: Kayak and Snorkel

We will pick you up at the point in Panama City of your choice at 8:00 a.m. to transfer you to a minibus for a 90-minute drive to Portobelo.

But instead of visiting the town, we will pass that up and go directly to the beach, where our kayaks will be ready to take us out onto the Panamanian Caribbean. You’ll enjoy the stunning Atlantic coastline as we paddle to a charming private island. There on the island, you’ll exit the boats and begin snorkeling! You’ll be tantalized by the wide variety of unique fish and coral throughout this incredible adventure.

We then travel back to the mainland and board the minibus once more to travel to the small but historic town of Portobelo. Lunch is on us where you can enjoy the local cuisine.  As we leave Portobelo, we’ll make sure to stop at the ancient ruins to learn a bit about the fascinating history.

Finally, we’ll return to Panama City and drop you off at your hotel by 4:30 p.m.

Included are hotel pick up and drop off, an English-speaking guide, kayaking and snorkeling equipment, lunch, admission fees, and a bottle of mineral water.

 

dronepicr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Option 3: Scuba diving

The scuba tour accommodates options for both licensed and unlicensed divers.  All divers go together and are only separated when we get to the diving location.

We pick you up from your hotel at 7:30 a.m. for the 90-minute drive to Portobelo, and then a little past that to the Caribbean Sea launching point.

From there, the divers without a license will first get some basic scuba diving training and then be allowed to practice their new skill in shallow water in Portobelo Bay to a depth of 10 meters.

For the divers with an internationally recognized and certified Open Water Diver license, you will be taken to one of several dive sites depending on weather, sea, or visibility conditions where you can dive twice over the course of an hour.  Expect to see tuna, marlin, seahorses, turtles, and manta rays.

After diving, everyone will go back together to Portobelo for lunch (options include chicken or fish with a choice of coconut rice, french fries, or fried plantains. Then you’ll be off to take a short tour of the city to see its historic fortifications that held off pirates!

Plan on being back at your hotel in Panama City by 5 p.m.

Included are hotel pick-up and drop-off, all transportation, an English-speaking guide, lunch, 2 oxygen tanks, weight belt, BCD, and regulator, mask, fins, and snorkeling equipment.

 

 

 

Additional information

Tour

History and Agua Clara Locks (8:00 am), Snorkeling/Kayaking (8:00 am), Scuba Diving (7:30 am)
Departure location

The transportation picks you up directly from and returns you to your hotel in Panama City.
Policies

80% refund for cancellations up to 5 days before the tour.
50% refund for cancellations up to 2-4 days before the tour.
No refunds if cancelled less than 48 hours (2 days) before the tour.

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