Located on a narrow strip off of the central Pacific in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio is home to gorgeous sandy beaches and the award-winning Manuel Antonio National Park. Despite being one of this rich country’s smallest, Manuel Antonio National Park is also one of the most popular, thanks in part to its accessibility, its marvelous beach, and its abundance of wildlife.
The park has one of the most impressive landscapes in the world and is visited by as many as 150,000 guests a year. It has an evolving infrastructure that currently includes a series of handicap accessible trails that stretch from near the entrance all the way to the beach, as well as clean bathrooms and changing areas, all created in harmony with nature.
Manuel Antonio is home to monkeys, sloths, iguanas, toucans, scarlet macaws, and much, much more: though you can enter the park for a mere US$10, it’s well worth it to hire a guide to lead you through the trails. They have an uncanny way of spotting even the tiniest and most camouflaged of creatures, though to be sure some of them—particularly the monkeys—have no problem showing off!
Below is a small sample of some of the cool inhabitants of Manuel Antonio National Park and, as they say in Costa Rica, enjoy the ¡pura vida!
All images taken by Elias Mora, EMG Photography
