Manuel Antonio National Park Hike Guide
Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the smallest parks in Costa Rica but without a doubt, the most visited. Hiking in the park is mostly on paved or well maintained gravel trails. As of February 2018, the park opened a universal trail for those with disabilities and is wheelchair friendly. Outside of hiking, Manuel Antonio National Park has three different beaches to enjoy. The park does have a series of bathrooms, showers and changing areas in addition to a food court which is opening in the near future.
Manuel Antonio National Park Quick Facts
Manuel Antonio National Park Rating: ★★★ (3.5/5 Stars)
Distance: Various – view park map here. The park has about 5-7 total miles of trails.
Elevation Start: 30ft
Highest Point in Park: 400ft
Total Elevation Gain: Various – most trails under 100 ft
Estimated Time to Complete: Various – Most trails can be completed in about an hour.
Difficulty: Easy to Moderate – What does this mean?
Class: Class 1
Season: Year Round
Directions to Manuel Antonio National Park
Trailhead: Manuel Antonio National Park
Getting Here: You can drive, take a taxi or take a tour bus to the entrance of Manuel Antonio National Park. If you do drive, parking can be kind of a clusterfuck. I would recommend parking near the beach and walking or better yet, just cabbing it to the entrance from your hotel. Local “parking lots” will gouge you for parking and is absolutely not worth it. There is only one entrance to the park. You can enter “Park Entry Manuel Antonio” Google Maps.
Parking: There is extremely limited parking at the gates of the park so you will most likely have to park in one of the nearby lots and walk over. They do gouge you for parking rates so be sure to shop around before choosing one.
Fees: $16 per person, $3 for locals – tickets are purchased at the bank to the right of the entrance to the park.
Summary
Guides: Guides are not required to enter the park, see my tip below for more information about guides in Manuel Antonio National Park.
Hours: 7:00AM – 4:00PM Daily
Dogs: Dogs are not allowed inside Manuel Antonio National Park
Make it a Loop: There are many trails inside Manuel Antonio National Park and most of them can hiked together to make a loop. View a complete park map here.
Park X Factors: Guide vs No Guide
Before entering Manuel Antonio National Park, you need to make a decision: do you want to hire a guide or do you want to hike the park without one. Until the night before, we did not have a guide, but decided at the last minute to hire one. We ended up spending about $110 dollars on a private guide for 2 people + our tickets into the park. Our guide did take us on an extended trip through the park (on a route that most tour guides do not go). The pro for having a guide is that they all are able to show you a variety of animals through a telescopic lens. In general, they will be able to spot wildlife in the park that you had no idea was even there. However, I will admit that gathering around a telescope looking at the same animal 30 other people were looking at got old after a while.
I would be happy to share information on the guide we used, he was great and we were happy we ended up hiring him. If you are not entering the park with a guided group/private guide, you will be rushed with a variety of people at the entrance of the park offering you their services. These people are sometimes legitimate, but be sure to ask for their license if you are worried about being scammed. In addition to animal spotting, guides are able to give you more information about the wildlife in the park and the park itself.
If you do not choose to hire a guide in Manuel Antonio National Park, you will most likely run into an abundance of wildlife, you just may not see as many animals.
Hike Tip(s):
- Swimming in the Park – I strongly recommend bringing a bathing suit, sandals and towel to enjoy the three beaches inside the park. Playa Gemelas is the smallest beach, but offers the most seclusion in terms of people. Playa Manuel Antonio is the most popular, offers the largest beach and calmest waters inside the park. We ended up swimming at Playa Espadilla Sur Beach which was somewhat secluded, had beautiful views and water with a bit of a current. All three are unique beaches and were some of our favorites while visiting Costa Rica.
- Food & Wildlife – Don’t feed the wildlife and if you do have food in your bag, be sure to keep an eye on it while swimming. Monkey’s are very smart and tried stealing Jackie’s bag even though she was only about 4 feet away from it. Large food (sandwiches etc.) are not allowed in the park, but snack sized things and fruit are. To be honest, its a weird rule and I think there are two reasons for it: prevention from feeding animals and minimizing human trash. Bottomline, do not feed any animals and pick up after yourself.
- Trails Inside the Park – I wouldn’t recommend hiking the Sendero La Catarata (waterfall trail) as it is small and rather unimpressive. This trail is only good if you are looking to try and spot a poison dart frog as it is the only spot in the park they live. Outside of this trail, I would recommend hiking out to Playa Puerto Escondido Beach. While you can’t access the beach itself, these are some of the best aerial views within Manuel Antonio National Park.
- Park Closing – According to our guide, the park has a limit of 600 people (800 on weekends) at any given time. If you get to the park later in the day on a busy day, there is a high chance you will have to wait to enter the park. My recommendation would be to get to the gates exactly at 7AM to avoid this problem.
Best Views: Manuel Antonio National Park is very beautiful and offers a variety of stunning viewpoints within the park. In terms of beaches, Playa Gemelas and Playa Espadilla Sur where our two favorites. Outside of the beach views, be sure to hike up to Playa Escondido viewpoint where you can see the massive untouched east/ south sides of the park which have no trails.
Manuel Antonio National Park Hike Route
Shows a typical guided tour route within the park.
Gear Needed
- Mickey’s Mountain Kit
- Footwear: Hiking Shoes/boots – Hiking boots are not 100% necessary to enjoy the park, sneakers/sandals are completely suitable for most trails.
- Water & Snacks (outside large food [sandwiches etc.]are not allowed)
- Optional: Swimsuit
- Optional: Water Shoes / sandals
- Optional: Towel
- Optional: Camera
- Optional: Tripod
Our Trip to Manuel Antonio National Park: November 2018
Manuel Antonio National Park was our first experience of a Costa Rican National Park on our trip. At the last minute, we decided to hire a private guide, Mauro, who we found through our Airbnb owner. We met the guide at 7AM and headed into the park shortly after. He was very friendly, spoke great English and seemed to have been doing the “tour circuit” for a while. As if to prove his worth, he immediately spotted some crabs and lizards about two seconds into our hike in Manuel Antonio National Park.
The weather was not on our side and the skies opened up with heavy rain for about 30 minutes. This seemed to make animal spotting significantly more difficult as we struck out on seeing any poison dart frogs. Our guide informed us that the park was relatively empty, but in my opinion there were people everywhere. Mauro told us that after 600 people the rangers would make guests wait to enter the park until others had left. Insane! We walked along the concrete and gravel trails and eventually spotted some howler monkeys and a three toed sloth in a tree. While it was cool, it was not a great sensation to be sharing the views with 3-4 other groups all who had children who seemed more interested in splashing in the puddles or staring at their phones than observing the wildlife.
The monkeys were particularly cool to watch since they had younger ones who were still learning the ropes about jumping from tree to tree. Mauro was great with the telescopic lens and was able to take a ton of cool pictures through the lens via our iPhone. While it was great to capture these moments, at times it felt more like racking up pictures on the phone instead of observing the animals themselves. We completed the normal “guide loop” and this is were Mauro told us that most tours ended. Since we had booked a longer day, he took us out to Escondido Beach. On the way, we ran into a group of curious Capuchin monkeys who almost seemed to pose for pictures for us. After some more hiking, Mauro took us off the trail to a large Ficus Tree that he claimed was one of the oldest in the park. It was massive. The vine that grew down from the huge tree was probably bigger than anything we had growing at home.
Back on the trail, we ventured up to the viewpoint, snapped some photos and headed to the first beach of the day: Playa Gemelas. Here we found some iguanas which Mauro seemed completely jaded by. Jackie and I had never seen them in the wild though, so we thought it was pretty cool. This beach was very secluded and was a perfect spot to snap some long exposure pictures. After a short stay, we continued on towards Playa Manuel Antonio and Playa Espadilla Sur where we parted ways with Mauro.
Jackie and I took a quick dip into the ocean before doing a bit more hiking and left the park around 3PM. Overall, we did enjoy our time in Manuel Antonio National Park, especially the beautiful beaches. The hiking however, was not what either of us were expecting. I am not even sure if you can call what they had in the park trails, since almost of them were paved or laid out with gravel. I think we both were expecting a bit more seclusion/adventure into nature, but Manuel Antonio National Park didn’t necessarily offer that. I don’t think we would visit the park again, but I would recommend checking it out if you are in the Quepos area.
