🇨🇷 Costa Rica · Central and South Pacific
Few places pack so much nature into so little space as Manuel Antonio. Its national park, one of the smallest in Costa Rica, is also one of the most visited and best loved, and it isn't hard to see why: in a single morning you can walk rainforest trails watching monkeys, sloths and iguanas, and finish sunbathing on a white-sand beach framed by jungle, with turquoise sea at your feet.
This stretch of the Central Pacific brings together what many travelers come to Costa Rica for: accessible, abundant wildlife, beautiful beaches, lush nature and a wide range of adventure options and services. Capuchin monkeys and mischievous squirrel monkeys (monos tití), sloths hanging from branches, raccoons and coatis, iguanas and countless birds share the place with visitors in a spectacular setting, a step away from the comforts of Quepos.
This guide walks through the essentials of Manuel Antonio with a practical, warm eye: how to visit the national park and its beaches, what wildlife to expect, which adventure and sea activities to choose, how to get around between Quepos and the park and how to arrive from San José. It's an ideal destination for anyone who wants to see a lot of nature without complications, combining it with beach, adventure and comfort.
Costa Rica's Central Pacific region was inhabited in pre-Columbian times by Indigenous peoples, among them the Quepoa (or Quepos), from whom the present-day city of Quepos takes its name. With the arrival of the Spanish and, later, with the country's development, the area went through different economic stages. In the 20th century, Quepos became an important banana hub: the United Fruit Company set up large banana plantations in the region, built infrastructure and gave Quepos the character of a 'company' town. When banana diseases and other factors led that activity into decline, the plantations were largely converted to African oil palm, which is still visible across the region. The great turn toward tourism came with the protection of the coastal strip: Manuel Antonio National Park was created in 1972 to protect its forests, beaches and wildlife, and over time it became one of the icons of Costa Rican nature tourism. Quepos went from banana town to gateway of a world-famous destination, rounded out in recent years by developments such as Marina Pez Vela. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The country's longest coastal province, from the Central Pacific to the deep south: from the historic coffee port of Puntarenas to the cloud forests of Monteverde, from the beaches of Manuel Antonio to the wild jewel of the Osa Peninsula and Corcovado, 'the most biologically intense place on Earth'.
Read the history of Puntarenas →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Manuel Antonio was a world-famous destination, Costa Rica's Central Pacific region was home to Indigenous peoples. Among them were the Quepoa (or Quepos), who gave their name to the present-day city of Quepos. These peoples lived from fishing, hunting, gathering and farming, drawing on the wealth of the coast, the estuaries and the rainforest of the area.
The Central Pacific region was a point of contact and influence between different cultural traditions in the country. After the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, the Indigenous populations of this area, as in much of Costa Rica, went into a drastic decline from disease, conflict and exploitation, and many of those peoples practically vanished as distinct groups, leaving their mark above all in place names.
Through much of the colonial period and the early years of independent Costa Rica, the Central Pacific remained a relatively remote, undeveloped region of jungle, coast and small settlements. The real economic transformation of the Quepos area would come much later, well into the 20th century, driven by a crop that would change its face: bananas.
The great engine that transformed Quepos in the 20th century was the banana. From the 1930s and 1940s on, the powerful American company United Fruit Company (the same one operating in other parts of Central America and on the Costa Rican Caribbean) set up large banana plantations in the Central Pacific area, turning Quepos into an important banana hub and export port.
The company's arrival changed the region completely. Plantations, infrastructure, worker housing, a port and services were built, and Quepos took on the typical character of a company town, organized around the banana business. Workers arrived from many places, and the local economy came to depend largely on the fruit. It was a boom period, but also one of the social and labor tensions that marked the banana industry across Central America.
In time, the diseases that hit the banana plantations (such as Panama disease and sigatoka), together with other economic factors, drove the activity into decline in the area. United Fruit gradually abandoned or converted its operations, and much of the banana land was turned over to African oil palm, whose vast plantations are still visible today along the coastal highway. By the mid-20th century Quepos was left looking for a new economic direction.
The event that would steer the region toward tourism was the protection of its extraordinary coastline. In 1972 Manuel Antonio National Park was created, with the aim of protecting the forests, the beaches, the rocky shoreline and the rich wildlife of this strip of the Central Pacific. Although it is one of the smallest national parks in Costa Rica by area, it holds exceptional biodiversity and scenic beauty.
The park was created partly out of concern to shield this area from development pressure and to keep public access open against attempts to privatize the beaches. It thus safeguarded one of the most beautiful jungle-and-beach settings in the country, where the jungle reaches almost to the water's edge and where monkeys, sloths, raccoons, iguanas and an enormous variety of birds live in a relatively accessible space.
Over the decades, Manuel Antonio became one of the icons of Costa Rican nature tourism and one of the country's most visited parks. Its unique mix of easy-to-spot wildlife and idyllic beaches turned it into a magnet for travelers from all over the world, and around it grew a tourism industry that changed the economy of Quepos and the whole area.
After the banana era declined, and with the national park now protected, Quepos and Manuel Antonio went through a deep transformation over the last decades of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. The old banana port reinvented itself as the gateway to one of the most popular nature destinations in Costa Rica, and intense tourism activity grew up around it.
Along the road linking Quepos with the park entrance, hotels of every category sprang up —from luxury properties with panoramic Pacific views to hostels and budget cabinas—, along with restaurants, shops and tour operators. The area filled up with activities that complement the park: nature tours, catamaran trips, sport fishing, rafting, canopy and outings to waterfalls and mangroves. Quepos, for its part, modernized its waterfront with Marina Pez Vela, a marina development with restaurants and services that became a new center of gravity.
That growth, the region's economic engine, has also raised sustainability challenges: managing the huge number of park visitors (which forced a daily cap and closing days), the pressure on the ecosystem and on wildlife —far too used to humans—, and the need to balance development with conservation. Manuel Antonio thus embodies, once again, the story of Costa Rica: a shift from extracting resources to a model based on natural wealth, with the successes and the tensions that path involves.
Manuel Antonio's great treasure is its biodiversity, packed into a relatively small space. The park and its surroundings shelter a remarkable variety of wildlife: capuchin (white-faced) monkeys, howler monkeys, two-toed and three-toed sloths, raccoons, coatis (pizotes), iguanas, snakes, frogs, an enormous diversity of birds and marine life along its shore. That abundance and accessibility is what makes the park so special for visitors.
Among all this wildlife, one species has become the emblem of the area and a symbol of its conservation: the squirrel monkey or mono tití (in the Central American subspecies found on the Central Pacific). These small, agile primates, with orange fur and expressive faces, move through the jungle in troops and are one of the great draws for visitors. They are, however, a threatened species, historically hit by habitat loss, jungle fragmentation from roads and development, the illegal pet trade and accidents (electrocution on power lines, roadkill).
Protecting the mono tití and its habitat has become an important cause in the region, with initiatives such as installing 'monkey bridges' over the roads (rope crossings that let the primates cross without coming down to the ground or using the power lines), campaigns against feeding wildlife and efforts to reforest and reconnect fragments of jungle. The story of the mono tití sums up Manuel Antonio's challenge well: conserving extraordinary nature in the middle of tourism success, so that future generations can keep marveling at the life that makes this corner of the Costa Rican Pacific unique.