Catamaran, Sailing Ship or Mangrove Boat in Manuel Antonio?

Pick a catamaran if you want waterslides, a steadier ride and a pickup from your hotel. Pick Brisa Elegante, a wooden sailing ship, if you’d rather share the deck with 46 people at most and eat a meal cooked on board. And if what you want is crocodiles and monkeys, neither boat is your trip. That’s a mangrove outing on the Isla Damas channels, on a different day.

The catamarans

Most boats out of Quepos are big catamarans with slides and nets, built for a hundred or more people. Planet Dolphin’s own site, for one, puts 150 guests on its Manuel Antonio boat. The two hulls sit far apart, so a catamaran leans much less than a single-hull boat. That helps with seasickness, though it doesn’t cure it.

Five of the six trips we compare are catamarans. Four include hotel pickup, and GTC Costa Rica’s day trip collects you in San José. The day is built around the swim stop, usually in Biesanz Bay, with waterslides and snorkel gear on most boats, trampoline nets on Planet Dolphin’s and pool noodles on some. Drinks vary more than anything else, from none to a capped allowance; is the catamaran tour worth it lines them up trip by trip.

The most-reviewed of them is the Costa Rica Groups catamaran, 4.6 from 187 reviews, from about $95 on the booking platform, with lunch or dinner, drinks up to a limit, a slide and a jumping platform. One reviewer in their twenties found it geared to families more than to a party crowd.

Brisa Elegante, the wooden sailing ship

B E Cruises sails Brisa Elegante, and it isn’t a catamaran. It’s a 100-foot, two-masted wooden gulet, built in Turkey and launched in 2010, which came to Costa Rica in 2021 after years of charter work in the Bahamas. It has two teak decks, a bar and lounge areas, and it takes up to 46 guests on a shared cruise.

How much it actually sails is a fair question. The operator says it does. A five-star reviewer in April 2026 doubted the sails made much difference to the trip. Book it as a two-masted wooden sailing ship, not as a promise of engine-off sailing.

The cruise spends two hours along the coast past the national park and an hour at anchor near Playa Biesanz, where you can swim, snorkel, take out a kayak or a paddleboard, or walk the plank. The crew cooks on board: an early lunch on the morning cruise, an early dinner on the sunset cruise, with fish, chicken, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options. A welcome cocktail, soft drinks, water, coffee and fruit are included, and other alcohol is sold at the bar.

Reviewers keep coming back to the food and the crew. One, celebrating a birthday, found it more intimate than the typical catamaran and had grouper for lunch; another was glad of the vegan option.

The practical differences matter. There’s no hotel pickup: you check in at the Brisa Elegante office in the marina’s main building, at 8 am for the morning cruise or 1 pm for the sunset one, and the listing is clear that the ship leaves on time with no refunds for anyone who misses it. It sails rain or shine and isn’t suitable for wheelchair users. It costs from about $148 on the booking platform, rated 4.9 from 104 reviews. Its season runs from 4 November to the end of August; from mid-September to early November it is hauled out for annual maintenance.

A mangrove trip is a different outing

Isla Damas is a tidal estuary near Quepos. Trips there go by covered boat or kayak through the mangrove channels, timed to the tide, and the animals are crocodiles, caimans, white-faced monkeys, roseate spoonbills, kingfishers, crabs and boas rather than dolphins and whales. It’s a river nature trip, not a sea cruise, and we don’t cover it on this site. If you have two free mornings, it sits well beside a boat day rather than in place of one.

Two other trips get mixed up with this one. The Whale’s Tail is in Marino Ballena National Park near Uvita, an hour south, and Tortuga Island catamarans sail the Gulf of Nicoya, far to the north. A Manuel Antonio catamaran is neither: it’s half a day at sea along the park’s coast.

Which boat suits you

Prices, ratings and review counts from our October 2026 data check; operators use seasonal pricing, so treat them as the shape of the market, not a quote.

If seasickness is part of the decision, is a Manuel Antonio catamaran tour safe covers it, and morning or sunset explains which sailings run when. Every boat is side by side on the homepage.

Boat details from the operators’ listings and Brisa Elegante’s own site; mangrove trips from Quepos operators. Checked October 2026.