Benagil, brunch and an open bar: what €52.80 for five hours out of Vilamoura actually covers

The title of this tour makes two promises: brunch and an open bar. The booking page carries four figures: €52.80 per person, five hours, 4.6 out of 5 stars, 684 reviews. What exactly the open bar covers is the question to settle before booking.

Ask what the open bar covers

A headline is not a specification, and the mind fills gaps with whatever it expects. One reader pictures beer and wine from the moment the lines are cast off, another pictures a bottle of water with the brunch. Both have read the same headline. Four questions are therefore due before you book, and they belong in a message to the operator: which drinks exactly, from what point in the trip, are they served on board or only at the swim stop, and what do children get instead.

“Open bar” is not a protected term

There is no definition an operator would have to meet. The phrase is an advertising line, not a specification. In the Vilamoura listings it turns up a second time: on the sunset boat party with its DJ. Different vessel, different time of day, same two words – which on their own say nothing at all about the contents. Where the evening departures sit on price is set out under sunset cruises: 3 offers, from €25.

Who may pour, and for whom: 18 years

Here the legal position is clear, unlike the advertising line. The governing text is Decreto-Lei n.º 50/2013 of 16 April 2013 as amended by Decreto-Lei n.º 106/2015 of 16 June 2015, in force since 1 July 2015. It prohibits supplying alcoholic drinks to minors, selling them, or making them available for commercial purposes, in public places and in places open to the public. Minors are also barred from drinking there. In Portugal you come of age at 18.

The 2015 amendment is the reason older guidebooks still quote different figures. Until then there was a split: beer and wine earlier, spirits later. Since 1 July 2015 one single limit applies to every alcoholic drink. An excursion boat whose seats are sold to the public is not carved out of that, and the crew enforces it. For fifteen to seventeen-year-olds this means something plain: they come along, they get no alcohol – Vilamoura with teenagers.

Whether the tour itself has a minimum age is something to check on the booking page. Where the line falls is each business’s own decision; the figure sits in the booking details, not in the title: boat trips with kids, from what age.

Brunch on board means eating on a moving boat

No table, no plates that stay put, no second helping from a kitchen. What is usual is a cold buffet or a packed set, handed out during the calm stretch of the programme, while the boat is anchored or running slowly, and not on the fast passage. When exactly, the operator will tell you, and that determines whether someone should set off on a light breakfast or on a full one.

What gets served is a question for the operator. That is why allergies and intolerances are a question before booking and not one on the pontoon – no substitute is going to be fetched there. The same goes for vegetarian or vegan: often possible, promised by nobody, and a note the day before achieves more than one at the moment of departure. How to catch that on land when a meal falls through is what eating out with kids sets out.

And then the toilet. On a three-hour trip it is a comfort detail you overlook. On five hours with food and drinks it is a different question altogether. Whether there is one and whether it is reachable under way goes into the same message.

Where the five hours go

Not into more time inside the cave. This is the point at which most people miscalculate. How long a motorboat is allowed to stay in there is set by the authorities and applies to every boat – the detail is in the short Benagil trip from Vilamoura. If your boat goes inside at all, the visit is brief whichever trip you book.

The difference lies elsewhere, and it is worth confirming with the operator: a swim stop, the meal and a longer run along the cliff coast. For the shorter version, check its booking page for a swim stop. Those, not the cave, are where the additional hours go. Book five hours and you are buying time on board and a meal, not more cave. Which trip matches which expectation is worked through in which boat trip suits you.

The price per hour

The arithmetic is short: divide €52.80 by five hours and the short trip’s €25.60 by three.

Two sentences follow from that. Anyone who only wants to see the cave and be back at the pool by midday is paying here for time they never wanted – the hourly rate is beside the point, the hours are the problem. Anyone with half a day free anyway gets more time on board, and whether that is the better value depends on what the two hourly figures come to on the day. Where this trip sits among the other prices is shown in the price overview for Vilamoura.

Sun, salt water, five hours without shade

An excursion boat rarely has a roof over every seat, and the sun over the Algarve stands high at midday. Alcohol, heat and swimming all land on the same afternoon here, over a longer day than the short trip. What follows from that is what common sense says, not a manual: carry drinking water, cover your head, and know how much you have drunk before you go over the side into open water. Anyone sensitive to sun or to movement on board settles that beforehand with a doctor or a pharmacy – nothing on that stands here, because nothing can.

Whether the boat sails at all is decided by the sea – boat trips in rough seas – and which month brings which conditions is shown in the best time to visit Vilamoura.

When this is the wrong booking

With small children. Five hours with no way off, an open bar among adults and a swim stop in open water are manageable one at a time and wearing all together. The shorter version is almost always the better call here, for the same reason that half a day instead of a full day with kids works.

With a delicate stomach. Eating on board and moving about in the water do not agree with everyone, and five hours give the problem more room than three: seasickness in children. A wide hull rides more steadily – 6 offers in the listings are built that way, from €25: catamaran tours.

And for anyone whose sole objective is the cave. Then every minute that does not lead there is paid waiting time, and there are two hours more of it here than necessary. Benagil cave tours from Vilamoura lists 13 departures, from €23.20.

Two ratings side by side

This tour sits at 4.6 out of 5 stars, counted across 684 reviews. The short trip along the same coast sits at 4.6 out of 5 from 150 reviews. Which of the two scores is higher on the day can be read from those figures.

Whether the score has anything to do with the larger programme cannot honestly be explained – the cause is in none of the numbers available here. Only the structural point can be made: an offering with a crossing, a cave, a swim stop, food and a bar has five parts where something can fail to fit. One with a crossing and a cave has two. The more that is promised, the more chances there are of falling short of it – and asking before you book is exactly what guards against that: booking mistakes in Vilamoura.

Where this trip sits in the whole selection

There are 53 offers out of Vilamoura, from €6.

Anyone wanting to fill the other half of the day has a choice: things to do in Vilamoura lists 27 offers from €6. If the appeal is in the water rather than on the boat, look at water sports.