Life is full of disappointments. Maybe you’ve been craving hummus all day, but your favorite Lebanese deli is closed. Maybe the person you’ve fallen madly in love with told you they just don’t find you physically attractive. Or maybe, worst of all, you’ve wasted time on your Costa Rica trip visiting Manuel Antonio National Park.

For some reason, Manuel Antonio National Park is one of Costa Rica’s most popular parks. Everyone and every other travel guide seems to be madly in love with it. Lonely Planet lists it as number six out of eight best places to visit in Costa Rica. It’s become a “must visit” destination and I have no idea why. I did not have a good time there.

The Town of Manuel Antonio is a Gentrified Mess

The first thing that bugged me about Manuel Antonio was the stupidly quaint little village that shares the park’s name. This little collection of stores and hotels and hostels is just up the hill from the park, a short distance from the town and busy bus station of Quepos.

I thought Quepos was great. Yes, it was a little touristy, but it straddled that fine line of being touristy without feeling like its only purpose in the universe is just to serve gringos. Quepos is a former banana town, and supposedly gets a little sketchy at night. This sketchiness is what adds to the charm.

The little village of Manuel Antonio is, by contrast, clean and sanitized and pretty much only exists to serve gringos. We stayed in an oh so cute hostel, designed to be the perfect background for your Instagram feed. Everyone else there was young and attractive and had perfect beach bodies and nice clothes. It felt like I was sleeping inside an influencer’s Tik Tok feed. The organic hummus was good, though.

But, what does organic hummus have to do with Costa Rica? At least in Quepos you could get Costa Rican food, a healthy plate of gallo pinto. Nothing about the village of Manuel Antonio seemed to have anything to do with Costa Rica. I don’t understand why so many people spend so much money to fly so many miles away and then spend all their time in places that look and feel almost exactly like the generic, gentrified crap that exists at home.

On one of the most fun, but also most stressful, aspects of travel is finding and booking places to stay. These days you have options ranging from dirt cheap hostel dorms to luxurious White Lotus style resorts. Thankfully, the internet is here to make finding accommodation easier.

Hostelworld is the go to app for finding hostels. For everything else, there’s Booking.com. If you book through either of the previous links, I’ll gain a small commission at no extra cost to you.

The Woman with The Uniform and a Flag

The road snakes down from the gentrified crap settlement of Manuel Antonio to Manuel Antonio National Park. We had rented a car, and it looked like an easy drive. However, getting to the park turned out to be anything but easy.

As we drove down the hill, past the public beach, a woman wearing some sort of uniform flagged us down. She was literally standing in the middle of the road waving a flag. She motioned for us to pull into the parking lot.

I told her we weren’t going to beach; we were going to the national park. She stood in front of our car and kept telling us to park here. She had a uniform and a flag, so we figured this must be the parking lot for the national park, too. We paid 6000 Costa Rican colones, or about 12 dollars, for the privilege of parking there.

Of course, if parking costs 6000 colones it costs 6000 colones and that’s fine. And if we have to walk a ways, we have to walk a ways and that’s just life. Afterall, the woman did have a uniform and a flag.

We walked along the road towards the park, under the grueling tropical sun. As we approached the park entrance, guess what we saw? Parking lots. Plenty of empty parking lots, some almost directly next to the Manuel Antonio National Park entrance. All of them had signs advertising parking rates far cheaper than 6000 colones.

The Man with The Lanyard

Before our long walk to the land of economic parking rates close to the park entrance, we had another little fiasco.

The Woman with The Uniform and a Flag asked us if we had tickets. We did. You have to purchase your tickets to Manuel Antonio National Park in advance. This is probably a good rule, since the park is the most crowded in Costa Rica. We had done this and showed our tickets to the woman.

She shook her head and directed us to an official looking table resting in the shade a bit down the road. A bulky man in an ill-fitting official park ranger shirt greeted us. His shirt was wrinkled and some of the buttons were loose around his beer belly, but it looked like a park ranger shirt. He also had a lanyard with a laminated name tag and blurry ID photo. He must’ve been legit if he had a lanyard, right?

The Man with The Lanyard asked us, in fluent English, if we had tickets. I said “yes” again, and showed him the screen shot of our reservation on my phone. He squinted at the screen, then shook his head and frowned.

According to the Man with The Lanyard, our tickets only gave us access to the national park beach. If we wanted to walk on the trails, we’d have to hire a guide. Thankfully, he could offer us guide service for only $50 a person.

My bullshit detector finally clicked on. I think I said something like “no way” or “that can’t be true” or something like that. Maybe not the most tactful, but I had read nothing about Manuel Antonio requiring a guide.

He flipped out. He turned red and he shoved his thick chorizo finger in my face. “Who the hell are you to come to my country and tell me about it?! You aren’t from here, you don’t know about my country!”

He Apparently Cannot Be Stopped

Obviously, I couldn’t stand to have a stranger be angry with me. And besides, what do I know? Maybe my bullshit detector was off that day. I apologized to the Man with The Lanyard, and we shook hands.

However, there was no way we were going to pay $50 a person for a guided tour of the park. Even a quick glance online will show you tours for more like $30 a person. (Buy your tours through links on this site and you’ll support more unhinged ranting like this at no extra cost to you!)

Back to the story. We took our leave of the Man with The Lanyard and continued on to the park. As we got closer, near the cheap parking lots, we were approached by another man in a park uniform. I was a little nervous after our last encounter, but this guy’s uniform seemed to fit a bit better.

“Did someone try and tell you that you have to have a guide for the trails in the park?”

Why, yes. Yes, indeed someone did say almost exactly that.

“Yeah, we’ve had problems with that guy…”

Apparently, the Man with The Lanyard has been harassing tourists heading to Manuel Antonio Park for who knows how long. He’s been dressing like an official and trying to rip off unsuspecting tourists just like us. The other guy in a uniform said they’ve tried to get the police to do something, but the Man with The Lanyard keeps coming back. Thank God my bullshit detector still works.

For the record, guides are NOT mandatory in Manuel Antonio National Park. A good bullshit detector isn’t mandatory, but is highly recommended.

Going Hangry in Manuel Antonio National Park

Getting scammed, or getting yelled at by someone who is trying to scam you, is never pleasant. It was not a good way to start our day in Manuel Antonio. The day didn’t get much better.

You are not allowed to bring food into Manuel Antonio National Park, at least according to the official website. This is also probably a good rule, since they’ve had problems with tourists (and maybe sketchy tour guides) feeding animals. You shouldn’t feed wild animals, not in Manuel Antonio, not anywhere.

We had read that there was a kiosk and a little café selling food in the park. We figured we’d just eat there. We figured wrong.

Of course, all the options for buying food were closed. There was no kiosk. There was no café. There wasn’t even a vending machine.

The food places weren’t just temporarily closed, as in “be back in five minutes” or “just be patient, you dumb gringo, things take longer here.” They looked like they hadn’t been open for months. Doors were boarded. Windows were shuttered.

Nobody, not the park website, not the people taking tickets, not the Man with The Lanyard, told us the places to buy food were closed. We spent the day wandering around the park in the heat, dodging the crowds and feeling more and more hangry.

And to make matters worse, it seemed like everyone else had ignored the no food rule. One guy was wandering around with two bottles of orange soda under his arms. Other people were barbequing on the beach. And nobody offered us a single bite.

Is Manuel Antonio Worth Visiting? (No, it Isn’t)

I did not have a very good time in Manuel Antonio. On top of everything else, it was also very crowded. After having some time away, and now that I’m no longer so hangry, I will admit there were some positives about Costa Rica’s most visited park.

The park is full of animals. You can see iguanas, agoutis and monkeys. Lots and lots of monkeys that looked more and more appetizing the more I walked around the park on an empty stomach. Manuel Antonio has some cool animals. The beach is also nice. It is probably exactly what you have in your head when you picture a beautiful Costa Rican beach.

The sad thing is, I don’t think the animals or the beach were enough to overcome the crappiness of feeling hungry and dealing with scammers. I definitely do not think Manuel Antonio is worth visiting. Costa Rica has many more, much better, parks.

Some Alternatives to Manuel Antonio

So, where are those better parks? If you have the time and energy to get there, Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula is absolutely amazing. The beaches are also pretty, but the wildlife blows Manuel Antonio away. Plus, the guides are legit and there’s a café in the park that’s actually open.

If you don’t have the time or energy to go that far, I think that Arenal National Park is a fair alternative. It’s quite different from the Pacific Coast, but you can also see plenty of animals and it’s still quite beautiful. There’s no beach, but there are hot springs.

There’s also Tortuguero or Monteverde, or pretty much anywhere besides Manuel Antonio. Costa Rica is blessed with an abundance of gorgeous national parks. There’s no need to waste your time slogging through the worst one.

I really cannot understand why Manuel Antonio is so popular and so highly recommended. I’m the type of person who generally enjoys every place I travel to. The two exceptions are maybe Phoenix, Arizona and Manuel Antonio. Why do people like it so much? It boggles the mind.

It’s kind of sad that one of my least favorite places is in one of my favorite countries. I love Costa Rica. The people are friendly. The landscape is gorgeous. The wildlife is abundant. The tropical vegetation is friendly, gorgeous and abundant. There’s so much to do and see in Costa Rica that there really is no reason to waste your time in a disappointing place like Manuel Antonio.

Read more about Costa Rican destinations that are worth it here: Come to Costa Rica: A Travel Guide to the Tourist Hotspot I Still Love