We are a working nature reserve and botanic garden and not just a tourist attraction, and it helps us greatly if everything is booked in advance. We are committed to keeping groups small and making sure you will have someone with you who knows the reserve and can provide you with a detailed tour or, if you prefer, provide you with our pre-prepared tour pack which provides you with the information our visitors have found helpful for self-guided tours. We update this regularly and as new points of interest emerge.
All prices are per guest. Reserve online: on any experience below, choose the number of guests and a date, and go straight to payment by credit card. To add more experiences to the same booking, use "add more experiences" on the payment page. Your card is held, not charged, until your session is confirmed. At Seahorse Point we can only accept cash payments onsite.
Admission
Visit the Seagrass Café
You are very welcome to visit the Seagrass Café without a day pass. The café offers coffee, teas, coconut ice cream and home baking. Most days we have our Sommelier cold infused teas in four flavours, and Bocas, Panama coffee. If you are a group of more than four and book in advance, we can prepare a light lunch. The café is licensed for alcoholic beverages. The café closes at 4pm.
We do not sell plastic bottles of drinking water. All the water in the Café is filtered by UF ultrafiltration down to 0.03 microns and is available to fill your own water bottle.
For boat tour companies
Sloth Point and Boardwalk
- 30 minabout
- 200 ftmangrove boardwalk
A stop for panga tours on their way between the islands. Walk our 200 ft mangrove boardwalk and look for the sloths from inside the mangrove, rather than from the boat. Pay online for a block booking or by cash at the gate. If guests just want to visit the Café, then there is no charge.
Your guests get a closer view, and the boats stay out of the seagrass and the mangrove roots. Visit the Seagrass Café while you are here.
Tour companies book ahead on WhatsApp, +507 6741 7104.
Day pass: self-guided visit
10am to 3pm. The trails, the mangrove boardwalk and tree net, Casa de Liana, our library and information centre, the Forest of Flavours, the pond, a guided introduction on arrival, the Be a Tree Detective worksheet, and coffee at the Seagrass Café. Minimum two people.
Full Guided Tour
Per guest, for around two hours as the guided part of this tour. Minimum two people. Fridays and Saturdays, Thursdays by appointment.
For the rest of the day, you can enjoy the tree net, botanic gardens and forest walks.
Plankton under the microscope
Collect plankton from the bay and look at it under the microscope with our marine biologist, Dr Howard Dryden, one of the world’s leading biologists working on marine pollution and climate disruption.
The mangrove and the sloth walk
A guided tour of the mangrove and the sloth walk with a local Ngäbe from Bahía Honda. You are almost certain to see up to 5 sloths, and maybe iguanas, parrots and other animals.
Casa de Liana
Our library and information centre, a quiet place among the books to sit and watch the wildlife that visits.
The Forest of Flavours
The botanic garden of Seahorse Point, with 205 documented plants growing between rainforest and mangrove. See the botanical gardens, the permaculture systems and the nursery, where we are moving our seedlings out of plastic pots and into pots made from what the garden grows, starting with bamboo. The collection includes species we record with Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Along the way, meet the shampoo ginger, which grows its own shampoo.
Caribbean Coral & the Leafcutter Clay Studio
We make the clay from soil dug out of the ground by leafcutter ants, mixed with clay from the Forest of Flavours.
Corals need something to grow on. We gather and fire our own local clay into the right shapes and sizes, and return the hand-made coral sculptures to the reefs of Bahía Honda.
Led by our coral specialists and the artist Louis Hiemstra, you learn how corals communicate in colour, why they are nurseries to a quarter of all marine life, and how to shape your own platform to leave behind for the ocean or take home as a keepsake.
Understanding coral, making it with your own hands from leafcutter clay and returning it to the sea: there can be no better way to connect with and understand nature.
Two hours. Minimum of four people. Maximum eight people.
Archipelago to Andes: Wine and Chocolate Pairing
Per guest. 72 hours notice. Minimum four people. Maximum eight people.
Four organic wines from South America against single-origin Bocas chocolate, and the chemistry of why the pairings work.
There can be no better combination. The chocolate is locally sourced and processed in our kitchen, with flavours from our own garden: ginger, chilli, sea salt, honey and herbs.
We don’t produce the wine. Your host Diane has selected the best from South America to complement the flavours of the chocolate.
The Outdoor Kitchen at the Seagrass Café
72 hours notice. Minimum six people. Maximum eight people.
- Traditional Tamales of Panama with Martina
Forage on site, make them together, eat them for lunch. Three hours. Book online: your card is held, not charged, and we take the payment when six guests have booked. If six are not booked by the notice deadline, we release the hold and you pay nothing.Choose a date $90 per guestNew dates open for booking about a week ahead.
Add to your day
All add-ons are booked with a day pass.
Kayaks
Go self-guided for four hours, or with a guide for two hours.
Self-guided, four hours: In the mangroves and the seagrass meadow. Minimum of two people.
The Seagrass Seahorse Paddle: Guided, mornings only. Two hours. Minimum two guests, maximum four. Paddle into Bahía Honda and up the mangrove tunnel, and out into the seagrass meadow to look for the lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus) and the longsnout seahorse (H. reidi), with a guide who surveys the meadow first. We never promise a sighting, we never handle them, and every animal we find is logged to iNaturalist.
Safety: Use of the kayaks is at your own risk. You must wear the life jacket and protective gear we provide at all times on the water.Choose a date $55 per guestFri 23 OctSat 24 OctChoose a date $85 per guestFri 23 OctSat 24 Oct
Electric boat tour
Per guest. Two hours with a skipper, in a quiet, pollution-free electric boat. A gentle, quiet trip down Bahía Honda (deep bay) past the Ngäbe villages in the mangroves, to a freshwater river. We motor up the river under a mangrove canopy for about 1 kilometre, absolutely stunning and beautiful. Minimum of two people. Maximum four people.Choose a date $65 per guestFri 23 OctSat 24 Oct
Getting here
Seahorse Point is on Bahía Honda, Isla Bastimentos, and the boat journey from Bocas Town takes 15 to 20 minutes.
Bocas Town and Seahorse Point. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Ready to visit?
Please contact us on WhatsApp at +507 6741 7104, because mobile phone reception at our location does not work.
Message us on WhatsAppYou can also email us at nature@seahorsepoint.org.