Manuel Antonio National Park: Which Trails to Walk Now That Punta Catedral Is Closed

The park's calendar, its online-only ticket and one closed loop decide your morning more than any best-trails list

Article Marta Davi · September 25, 2026 · 7 min read

Book a morning entry for any day except Tuesday, buy the ticket online before you leave home, and plan your walk around the Perezoso trail and the beach trails rather than the Punta Catedral loop. SINAC lists Punta Catedral as temporarily closed, which removes the headland circuit that most trail guides still send families to walk first. The park is open Wednesday to Monday, 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and tickets are sold only through SINAC's online system. Everything else about the day is negotiable. Those three facts are not.

The gate opens and for about ninety minutes the forest belongs to whoever showed up early. Sloths are still in the open where they slept. Capuchins work the branches along the main trail with no crowd underneath them. By ten the same path carries a slow line of people looking at their phones, and the animals have moved up and back. That gap between 7:00 and 9:00 is the whole difference between a good Manuel Antonio morning and a hot walk to a busy beach.

The facts that set your day

Source: SINAC, Manuel Antonio National Park official page, read 24 September 2026. Third-party ticket sites currently list a 4:00 p.m. closing time and an $18 adult fee. SINAC's own page says 3:00 p.m. and $16 plus IVA, so that is what we plan around.

Which trails are open, and what each one gives you

The park is small and flat near the water, which is exactly why it works with children. You are not choosing between hard hikes. You are choosing where to spend your quiet first hour.

The Perezoso trail is the wide main artery in from the entrance, and it is where most families get their sloths and monkeys. Drinking water fountains sit along this trail and along the Manuel Antonio and Espadilla Sur beach trails, so a refillable bottle per person covers the morning.

The beach trails run parallel to Playa Manuel Antonio and Playa Espadilla Sur, with the mangrove visible alongside. SINAC describes the mangrove as roughly 18 hectares of mixed fresh and salt water, which is the kind of habitat where you look for crabs, herons and the flick of something moving in the roots. Playa Manuel Antonio is the calm, snorkel-friendly cove. Espadilla Sur is wider at low tide and less crowded, with more wave action in some seasons.

The Catarata trail reaches a small waterfall that SINAC says is only observable during the rainy season. In late September and October it is worth the detour. In February it is a dry rock face, so skip it and spend the time on the water instead.

The Mirador Punta Serrucho and Puerto Escondido viewpoints sit in the higher part of the park, around 160 metres up, and look out over islets that seabirds use. With teenagers, this is the walk that feels like an expedition. With a five year old in the heat, it is the walk that ends in a carry.

Punta Catedral is the loop you cannot walk right now. It is the old island joined to the coast by a sand tombolo, and it is the postcard circuit in almost every itinerary written before this year. SINAC lists it as temporarily closed. If your plan was built around it, rebuild the plan around the beaches and the viewpoints, and treat a reopening as a bonus rather than the spine of the day.

Is a guide worth it in Manuel Antonio?

For a first visit with children, yes, and the reason is optical rather than educational. Guides carry a spotting scope on a tripod. A sloth 20 metres up is a grey smudge to the naked eye and a face with claws through the scope, and that difference is what a seven year old remembers. SINAC records about 352 bird species, 109 mammal species and 346 plant species inside this park. You will find a fraction of that on your own.

Guides work from an office inside the park run by the Association of Certified Tour Guides of the Canton of Quepos, listed by SINAC as Manuel Antonio Official Tour Guides. Guided services run 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Afternoon tours at 3:30 p.m. run Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and night tours at 5:30 p.m. run Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, in special seasons from November to April only.

The honest counter-case: if you have already done a guided wildlife walk elsewhere on the trip, at Carara or in a cloud forest, a second guided park walk delivers less. In that case go in at opening unguided, walk slowly, and watch where other people's scopes are pointing.

The ticket mistake families keep making

There is no ticket window. Entry is sold online through SINAC's system only, so arriving at the gate with cash and optimism does not work. Buy before you fly if the park is a fixed part of the trip.

Two details catch groups out. Each person's ticket is checked against an identity document at the gate, so the names on the booking need to match the passports in the bag. And each ticket is valid once, which means a re-entry after lunch is a second purchase, not a stamp on your hand. Large groups should also expect the online system to cap how many entries one transaction holds, so build in time rather than clicking once for eleven people the night before.

If your only free day is a Tuesday

Then the park is not your Tuesday. Nothing gets you in, and this is the single most common wasted day in Manuel Antonio.

The good news is that almost everything else in Quepos runs. The public beach at Espadilla, north of the park entrance, is open every day, as is the mangrove and estuary world behind Quepos, which is a boat morning rather than a walk. Rafting on the rivers inland, a canopy circuit, and a private reserve walk are all off the park's calendar and on their own. The trade to make is simple: put the park on your first available non-Tuesday morning, and put the water or the estuary on the Tuesday.

If you tell us which days you are in town, we will tell you which order actually works. That is a two-message conversation, not a form.

What they will turn away at the gate

Manuel Antonio is strict, and for a good reason: the monkeys learned long ago that bags contain food. Food and drinks of any kind are not allowed in, subject to conditions the park administration sets, and umbrellas, tents, hammocks, balls and pets are all out. Lockers can be rented from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. There is a concession inside selling food and crafts, and eating is confined to its designated area between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The showers and changing rooms are there, but soap and shampoo are not permitted.

Carry a refillable bottle, closed shoes for the forest trails rather than sandals, reef-safe sun protection and a dry bag for phones. Leave the beach picnic in the hotel fridge.

One more piece of ground truth from SINAC's own recommendations: there is no parking at the park, and the single road that links Quepos to Manuel Antonio gets heavy in high season. Plan the arrival, not just the entry hour.

Green season, which is right now

SINAC notes that September and October bring lower visitation than other months because of the rain, and recommends visiting early. That is the whole argument for a green-season park morning in two lines. Fewer people on the Perezoso trail, the waterfall actually running, and a much better chance that the animals are still low when you arrive. Afternoons are when the sky opens, which matters less when your ticket got you in at seven.

Start with your dates

The Manuel Antonio day that works is usually the one built backwards from the park's calendar rather than forwards from a wish list. We know this coast from the hospitality side as well as the guiding side, which is where most of the practical detail above comes from.

Send us your dates and who is travelling, and we will tell you which morning to hold for the park, whether a guide is worth it for your group, and what to do with the Tuesday. Ask us anything. Pura Vida 🍃

Related reading: our Manuel Antonio travel guide for the wider destination, Carara from Jaco if you want a second Pacific wildlife walk, and what a Costa Rica trip actually costs for the decisions that move your daily spend.