Costa Rica has plenty of opportunities for wildlife spotting which we wanted to take advantage of on our family Costa Rica road trip. Spotting a sloth in the wild was top of our priority list and so we prepared our ‘wildlife bingo’ cards and set off to the small resort district of Manuel Antonio, outside Quepos on the west coast, to see if we could make this dream come true.
Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica is a top destination for wildlife spotting, offering visitors the chance to see sloths, various monkeys (howler, squirrel, and white-faced capuchin), crocodiles at Tarcoles Bridge, and other creatures like frogs, lizards, and snakes along rainforest trails leading to stunning beaches
When I first started researching our Costa Rica road trip itinerary, I wanted to visit the town of Uvita for whale watching opportunities, but then realised that July was not the best time for this activity.
However, whilst reading about what to do in the area, Manuel Antonio National Park caught my attention – established in 1972, it is Costa Rica’s smallest national park (16 sq km), but one of the most popular for wildlife spotting, with walking trails through the rainforest to picture postcard pretty beaches. This quickly became a focal point for this section of our trip and is the reason why we chose to look for accommodation in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica.
When we briefly visited Costa Rica on a cruise many years ago, we saw some enormous crocodiles at Tarcoles Bridge and wondered if they would still be there decades later? It turns out that they are!
The drive from San José, Costa Rica, to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, is about 2 hour 47 minutes long.
After about 1 hour 20 minutes’ drive, the road passes over the Tarcoles River which is a breeding ground for the crocodiles. There are usually several crocodiles sunning themselves on the sand banks beneath the Tarcoles bridge.
To see the crocodiles at Tarcoles bridge, you can park in front of the cafes and shops just before the bridge, which is a good place to get out, stretch your legs and grab a coffee (and even a Sarong from the shops).
People may offer to ‘help you’ park your car in a space, but just politely decline, or you will need to pay them a tip when it is not needed..
I would strongly advise booking a guide for your trip to Manual Antonio National Park so as not to miss wildlife spotting opportunities. Our guide (Henry from HP Tours) picked us up early in the morning in a minibus from our AirBnB accommodation and took us to Manuel Antonio National Park.
However, before we even got to the entrance of Manuel Antonio National Park, Henry pulled the minibus over by the side of the road, jumped out with his telescope and invited us to view four sloths in the Cecropia trees (the ones with umbrella shaped leaves) above us.
It pays to be with someone who knows what they are looking for as we would not have noticed the well camouflaged sloths at all – they mainly just looked like furry balls high up in the branches, but luckily, we were rewarded with a sloth who showed their face for us. Our wildlife spotting and sloth count was up and running!
Get Your Guide has several tour options, as follows:
When we booked our tour of Manuel Antonio National Park, our guide asked us to buy an entrance ticket to Manuel Antonio National Park on-line ahead of our visit. This is because there are restricted ticket numbers each day as it is only a small park.
The cost of the entrance fee to Manuel Antonio National Park was separate to the cost of the tour, so take your steer from the tour company you are using.
Manuel Antonio National Park is very strict and conducts bag searches on entry; they will confiscate single use plastics and any open foodstuffs you have with you. A couple of visitors on our tour had brought a picnic lunch with them and were made to throw it away before entering the park (although the husband didn’t want to throw his sandwiches away so tried to eat them at speed whilst still in the queue which was quite funny!).
Once through the bag inspection area and into Manuel Antonio National Park, you will follow your guide along the rainforest paths, stopping to look at various flora and fauna along the way. Henry pointed out wildlife that we would never have spotted on our own, including: a green tree frog, chameleon, lizards, tree crabs, snake, grasshoppers, howler monkeys, bats and lots more.
The pathways through Manuel Antonio National Park can be quite busy with groups of visitors and their tour guides, but it didn’t detract from the joy of wildlife spotting in such a beautiful setting.
Eventually the rainforest path opens on to a beautiful beach, still within the Manuel Antonio National Park – it was a breathtaking vista of turquoise sea and white sand against a backdrop of lush green tropical rainforest. There are many riptides around the coast in Costa Rica, but the beaches here in Manuel Antonio National Park were safe to swim in and warm as bath water.
The resort community of Manuel Antonio is set in the tree-lined hillsalong the coastline. You will see animal wires overhead to help monkeys and sloths cross the roads safely, so it is possible to see wildlife even when you are driving through.
We chose to stay in an AirBnB rather than a hotel (because I found an interesting one on the AirBnB App, rather than for any specific reason) and were awoken early every morning by the remarkable sound of Howler monkeys outside – they make an almost prehistoric noise. Then a troupe of small, cute Squirrel monkeys would swing by before breakfast.
In the evenings White-faced Capuchin monkeys would come and sit at the upstairs windows looking into the property – an eerie sight if I’m honest – catching the moths attracted to the evening lights of the house. This was a very special place indeed.
Costa Rica is famous for its stunning waterfalls, so as a change from wildlife spotting, we booked a full-day waterfall excursion with the tour company, Paddle 9. They took us by minibus from Manuel Antonio to their Headquarters in Quepos to sign waiver paperwork, and then drove us towards Uvita where we visited 3 different waterfalls.
The waterfalls were in beautiful settings and there were plenty of opportunities to have your photo taken by the tour’s photographer (available for purchase afterwards).
Then you were encouraged to join in with some waterfall fun, initially, gentle jumping into waterfall pools, but which quickly progressed to more adventurous jumping off 15 and 30 ft platforms, although there was no pressure to make the jumps.
After visiting the waterfalls, we stopped for a local lunch of fish, rice and beans before having some free time on the beach. As we were making our way back to Quepos in the minibus, our guides ran a quiz in relation to all the facts they had given us on the trip, so the journey went quickly!
You can book your waterfall tour through Get Your Guide:
Alternatively, you can visit the waterfalls independently, however it was quite nice not to have to worry about getting lost, and letting someone else take the lead. The guides were helpful and informative, and the day tour was good fun.
Manuel Antonio is a magical place to stay, teeming with wildlife, and lush scenery. We could happily have spent longer here as a base for further exploration. There are plenty of restaurants and mini supermarkets along the road through the town, many hidden in the trees so you need to know what you are looking for.
We enjoyed a great lunch at The Falafel Bar and a superb sunset dinner at El Lagarto Steakhouse which has an impressive BBQ rig set up. Our stay in Manuel Antonio raised the bar of our expectations for the holiday and increased our excitement about what we might experience at our next destination on the road-trip.
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