Manuel Antonio National Park Full Guide

Costa Rica is filled with natural gems around the whole country. This is why the government has created 27 National Parks until now. Manuel Antonio National Park is the most visited of those National Parks. This article will tell you everything you need to know before visiting this natural jewel.

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How to get to Manuel Antonio National Park?

This beautiful Natural Park is located in Puntarenas province, in the town of Quepos. Just around 2 hours and 30 minutes from San José city center.

Check the Google Maps location here: National Park’s Location

After you passed Quepos’ town center, you will take route 618. This route takes you past the mountains that divide Quepos from Manuel Antonio town. After you drive for 10 minutes in the middle of the hill, you will get to Manuel Antonio town center.

The center of Manuel Antonio has several restaurants and hotels with everything you need for a pleasant stay. There is a beach named Espadilla in front of the town center. This is a lovely beach but not as beautiful as the beaches inside the National Park.

What to know before visiting Manuel Antonio National Park?

Tickets and Schedule

You can buy tickets at the National Park entrance, but if you want to avoid any lines, I suggest buying them online. Just go to the SINAC website. This site is the official website to purchase tickets. You will receive an email with your QR code, and you’ll avoid crowded lines (especially during weekends).

Manuel Antonio National Park is open for the public from Tuesday to Sunday, from 7 am until 4 pm. The ticket fees are 1,800 colones ($3) for residents. For non-residents, the ticket fee is $18 and $6 for kids under 12 years old.

Where to park my car?

Once you are reaching Manuel Antonio town, you’ll see plenty of people offering parking for the National Park. If you want to get to know the whole Manuel Antonio town and the Espadillas beaches, you can park there. But if you are just interested in the National Park, I suggest you keep driving in the National Park direction, and you’ll find more parking lots.

The National Park doesn’t have an official parking lot, but you can find around three parking lots less than 50m from the park.

Things I can’t bring inside the park.

Since the 25th of February of 2021, Costa Rica’s Government made a good decision to ban the entrance of single-use plastics. This measure was created to avoid pollution inside the National Park.

You also can’t bring speakers to the park. Speakers affect wildlife inside the park. Try enjoying the sound of nature instead. I bet it’ll be more relaxing!

As you get closer to the National Park, there will be more and more people “selling tickets” or telling you things you can’t bring inside. Please don’t pay much attention to these people. Some of them try to scam tourists.

Should I hire a guided tour or visit the park by myself?

Manuel Antonio National Park’s official website offers different tours you can take inside the park. The most popular tour is the guided tour of the park. On this tour, you will go with an expert of the park who will tell you about the park’s history and will go stopping to show you all the wildlife in the park.

Pros of hiring a guided tour:

• Get to know about the history of the park.
• See more animals (if you are not an expert, it will be hard to see most animals).
• Take a closer look at the animals (the guides carry advanced binoculars).
• Get more information and facts about the wildlife.

Cons of hiring a guided tour:

• Less time to enjoy the beaches (guided tours focused most of the time on the main park trails).
• Less time to enjoy the National Park’s secondary trails (The park has 11 trails, most of the guided tours visit four trails).
• The park has very well-maintained trails with informative boards. So you can learn a lot by reading this without the necessity of paying for a guided tour.
• Budget (Guided tours are around $55 and $40 for kids).

What to do in the National Park?

The National Park is the perfect combination of relaxing on the beach and hiking in the tropical rainforest. I guarantee that this will be one of the highlights of your Costa Rica vacation. I suggest getting early in the morning, doing the trails first, and then going relaxing at the beaches.

Trails

There are nine trails in the entire park. All of them are very well maintained. And most of them have informative boards with information about the wildlife and flora around the trails. These are all the trails in Manuel Antonio National Park:

The trail names are very self-explanatory of what you will see in each of the trails. Personally, my favorite trail is the Espadilla Sur trail, a sandy trail in the middle of the rainforest.

Beaches

There are three beaches that people can visit inside the National Park. Manuel Antonio Beach, Gemelas Beach and Espadilla Sur Beach. Manuel Antonio beach is the most famous and beautiful beach. This beach has won international prizes for the best beaches in the world!

Besides the three mentioned beaches, there is an additional beach named Puerto Escondido Beach. But this beach isn’t currently open for the public. There are plans to create more trails to get access to this beautiful beach inside the park.

I suggest spending the main part of your time in the park enjoying Manuel Antonio beach, but beware! Capuchin monkeys are really smart, and they like to steal things from tourists. You will feel tempted to give the monkeys some food to take a closer photo, but please don’t do this!

I talked to one of the park rangers, and he told me that many animals had suffered diseases provoked by human food. Sadly, he even said to me that some Capuchin Monkeys had been tested with diabetes.

Espadilla Sur beach it’s also a lovely beach, but the tide might be more aggressive than Manuel Antonio beach. Regarding Gemelas Beach, this is a small rocky beach, so people usually don’t go for a swim there.

Facilities

In recent years, the National Park has been improving its facilities a lot. The park doesn’t use to have a cafeteria, and the restrooms were limited. But nowadays, there is a cafeteria working fully.

There are two main restrooms, one for Manuel Antonio Beach and another one for Espadilla Sur Beach. If you make the southeast trails, take into consideration that there are no facilities.

Wildlife in Manuel Antonio National Park

Animals in the park have complete freedom to go anywhere they want. Either way, if you do the visit guided or not, you will see a lot of wildlife in the park! Here are some of the animals that name this park home:

• Mammals: Sloths, three types of monkeys (Capuchin, Spider, and Howler), porcupines, coatis, bats, pumas.
• Reptiles and amphibians: Snakes, crocodiles, lizards, frogs.
• Birds and insects: Tucans, parrots, butterflies.

Most animals are nocturnal, but even though the park closes around 4 pm, you will still see plenty of animals.

Other things to do near Manuel Antonio?

You can do a lot of things near Manuel Antonio besides visiting the National Park. From waterfall hikes in the middle of nature to enjoy extreme adventures and discovering other beaches near the area.

Related Post: Hiking at Los Campesinos Ecolodge

• Waterfall Hikes: There are two main places near Manuel Antonio where you could go for a waterfall hike. Los Campesinos Ecolodge and Nauyaca Waterfalls are located 1 hour away from Manuel Antonio. Both of them have impressive waterfalls where you could have a perfect time.
• Extreme Adventures: Ziplining and paragliding are excellent options around the Manuel Antonio area.
• Beaches near Manuel Antonio: Playa Espadilla, Espadilla Norte and Playa Biesanz are nice beaches around Manuel Antonio area. If you don’t mind driving a bit more, try Uvita/Bahía Ballena or Dominical.