Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the best places for wildlife watching in Costa Rica. There are few places we’ve been where not only can you get within a few metres of rare wildlife, but at points you have to be careful that they don’t come too close to you!
It’s also incredibly accessible, you can see plenty of wildlife without hiking for hours, and without having to pay a fortune.
Go on any travel forum or Facebook group about visiting Costa Rica and you’ll consistently see people ask whether you need a guide to spot wildlife at Manuel Antonio, and surprisingly the answer is almost always yes.
We were really surprised, as we’ve been to a lot of places known for wildlife watching opportunities and rarely has there been an almost unanimous consensus that if you don’t have a guide you won’t spot anything.
We prefer to explore independently, so decided not to hire a guide, or join a tour, and instead try and spot what we could by ourselves.
Here’s how it went, as well as the pros and cons of visiting Manuel Antonio National Park with and without a guide.
Do you need a guide for Manuel Antonio National Park?
What to expect and the rough costs of hiring a guide
There are a lot of companies and individuals offering guided tours within Manuel Antonio National Park. The costs can vary significantly and we’ve seen prices ranging from $20 USD per person, to over $70 USD per person (and that was for a group tour of up to 10 people!). Private tours allow you to have a bit more control over the itinerary and what you do, but can be expensive depending on your negotiating skills.
It’s worth doing some research on the guide you’re considering before you book to ensure you get someone knowledgeable. We recommend hunting around on websites such as GetYourGuide which allow you to check review scores.
Most tours tend to last between two and two and a half hours, taking you along the official road (the wide gravel road that runs through the middle of the park), finishing at Manuel Antonio Beach.
The pros and cons of hiring a guide
The pros of having a guide
The biggest benefit of having a guide is their trained eye and local knowledge - many animals stay in a similar location and the guides know exactly where to look. A good guide will always spot more wildlife than you can (but that doesn’t mean you won’t spot plenty alone).
The second major benefit is the equipment they offer. A guide will offer the chance to look though a telescope, some will also have a pair or two of binoculars as well, which means you can get a great view of the wildlife up close.
If you tend to take photos with an iPhone, then a guide will help you get better photos of the animals by putting your phone up to the telescope lens. The photos will have a black circle around them though, so they aren’t the best quality, but will certainly be better than an average iphone photo if the animal is quite far away.
The other benefit of having a guide is that they’ll tell you information about the wildlife, which is particularly useful if you’ve only just arrived in Costa Rica and don’t yet know much about the wildlife.
The cons of having a guide
The biggest downside is the lack of independence and the crowds. There are dozens of group tours that run at the same time and the groups congregate together in the same spots. Whilst you might only be in a group of 10, you can easily be standing next to several groups and it’s not uncommon for 80 people to congregate in one small area. It can feel crowded, claustrophobic and really not the wildlife experience you probably hoped for. More like Disneyland than a dream wildlife watching trip.
Furthermore, whilst having a telescope is good, you’ll be sharing the same telescope with the rest of your group. This isn’t a problem if you have a small group, but if you have a large group, you’ll only get a brief moment to look through it and take a photo.
The biggest problem we have as independent travellers is that you’re at the behest of what your guide wants to do. If the guide wants to linger around a bird, you’ll all linger around a bird.
We saw a people being taken away from looking at a very active sloth because their guide had said they’d either taken long enough or that there was another animal, such as a nightjar, nearby to look at (we love nightjars, but can sympathise with those feeling aggrieved at being taken away from a magical moment with a sloth). You can try to go back after the tour to see it again, but the animal may have moved on.
Many of these issues are mitigated if you hire a private guide, but it will depend on your budget.
We always think it’s a bit more exciting to spot wildlife ourselves too, it just has a more special feeling when you’ve been the one to see it first.
Can you see wildlife without a guide at Manuel Antonio?
Despite what you might be told, you can see plenty of wildlife without a guide in Manuel Antonio, and what’s more, you get the joy of having spotted it yourself.
We aren’t the best wildlife spotters by any means, but we saw eight sloths, an anteater, coatis, an agouti, dozens of capuchins, howler monkeys, woodpeckers (among dozens of birds) and even poison dart frogs, all without a guide.
The brilliant thing about Manuel Antonio is that a lot of wildlife tends to hang around very close to the paths. We saw wildlife on every trail and people tended to go to lengths to help each other out. Any time we’d just spotted something like a sloth, we’d tell people coming along the path where to look, and people did the same for us.
When it comes to the offical road where much wildlife is spotted, you’ll find that tour groups block the path and you can’t get past, making it impossible to do anything but stop and look. It was much more fun finding wildlife on the trails the groups don’t go on, but you’ll certainly see plenty on the official road where all tour groups congregate.
The reality of most guided tours in Manuel Antonio is that they all take you on a scheduled route: along the main gravel road that runs through the middle of the national park. Tour groups move very slowly down the road to see animals that have already been scoped out.
The drawbacks of not having a guide
The main drawback to not having a guide is not learning about the wildlife and the environment in general. Second to this would be if you only plan on taking photos with your phone and some of the animals are quite far away. Getting close to Capuchin monkeys is almost guaranteed, but you might not get overly close to a sloth.
Normally we’d say a con would be seeing less wildlife, but to be honest, we saw so much that even if that is less than we would have seen with a guide, it was more than enough for us.
The verdict on whether you need a guide
The short answer to this is no, you don’t need a guide. If you prefer to visit places independently, or you simply want to save the money, then you can absolutely see wildlife without a guide. You may want to walk a little more than the groups do in order to cover more ground and increase your sightings, but even if you stick to the official road and forest running behind the beach, you’ll see plenty.
You can move at your own pace and on your own timetable. If you want to spend more time watching a sloth, you can. Or if you want to move on because it’s 35C, and you want some shade, then you can do that too. You might want to give yourself a little more time than the average guided tour, but that just means you’re making more of your visit - which for most people will be a special one off experience.
However, if you want information about the animals and access to a telescope, then a guide will likely be for you. If you really want a close up photo of a sloth or any other animal in Manuel Antonio, but only have your phone, then a guide is going to be necessary.
If you choose to hire a guide, then we recommend researching a smaller group tour as the national park tours with groups of 10 or more people aren’t ideal. If you can pay a little more and get a private guide it will be a much nicer experience. We saw a few private guides and they took their clients on some of the less trafficked trails, which offer far more natural wildlife encounters.
If you do want to visit Manuel Antonio without a guide, we have some recommendations on how to make the most of your day below.
The best way to visit Manuel Antonio National Park without a guide
We recommend entering the park at 7am - the earliest time slot possible. This is because it is the coolest part of the day and the time that wildlife is most active. Don’t expect the park to be quiet though, as hundreds of people will also arrive with the same idea.
The official road is the busiest part of the park and gets busier as the day goes on, but the crowds drop significantly as soon as you head to one of the hiking trails.
Start by heading to the official road, this is where you will spot the majority of wildlife over a short distance. We saw several sloths, an anteater, coatis, lizards, an agouti and a few birds, close to the path and not very high up in the trees. In the early morning, you may see sloths awake and moving around, providing perfect photo opportunities. But be aware this is where all the groups tours will be, so it won’t have a wild feel to it.
After a brief look at the main road, we decided to head to the Waterfall trail. As we visited in the dry season, the waterfall had dried up, but this is the place we saw three Poison dart frogs.
They are really small, but as the trail is blissfully quiet, we could hear rustles in the leaves and spot them easily. Some hopped across the path, and their distinctive green and black colouring helped them stand out.
After the Waterfall trail, we headed down the gravel road again to see more sloths before reaching the junction. At this point we took the Playa Las Gemelas trail to Gemelas Beach, a beautiful twin cove not to be missed. After this we headed further along the trail in the direction of Escondido beach and though you can no longer access the beach itself, we saw a huge troop of Capuchins - who decided to follow us along the path! At points they almost got too close!
After this we took the Mirador Trail, where we saw howler monkeys, woodpeckers and the closest sloth of the day! This one was sleeping whilst precariously dangling from a vine just above the track. As this trail is a bit steeper, we then chose to relax by Manuel Antonio Beach, which had dozens of Capuchins all grooming each other in the trees behind the beach.
We also visited Punta Catedral Cove, where large iguanas like to relax on the sand.
After many hours in the heat we looped back to the entry gate via the Sloth trail, where we saw one final sloth to round off an amazing day’s wildlife watching.
For even more info on planning your perfect day in the park, we have a more detailed guide, which includes all the logistics for your visit, the walking distances and difficulty of each trail, as well as which beaches are best for swimming or escaping the crowds. You can read it here.
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