Quepos & Playa Matapalo

The Quepos cabin was a nice space. We were steps away from a pool and after coming home, could make use of the outdoor shower and hose to clean the sand off ourselves before we jumped in the pool for a dip. The house also had an outdoor clothes rack, where we could dry our clothes and was well furnished inside with the one exception: It seems that Costa Ricans must think a ‘stove’ is a counter-top hotplate, so once again, our cooking options were limited. My concept of a stove (like Whirlpool’s explanation) = means it includes an oven. Not in Costa Rica.

We had planned our time here to include two visits to Manuel Antonio Park. First, a day tour by ourselves and then a night tour with a guide but things didn’t quite work out that way and after our first day of scoping out Manuel Antonio and the access area, I began doing a bit of research as to where we could find a nice secluded beach, hopefully like we had in Esterones de Samara. I’ll explain why in more detail later.

As luck would have it, we did.

Playa Matapalo.

Playa Matapalo is a long, quiet beach about 30 minutes south of Quepos. Unlike the incredibly busy beaches right around Manuel Antonio, Playa Matapalo’s shoreline was wide and wonderfully sandy and once again, it felt like we had the beach virtually to ourselves. Sure, there were people but when the beach is 7 kilometres long, 50 people looks like no one is there. We could see little dots of people along the coastline but once again, we basically had the beach to ourselves.

There were a few surfers but this looked like a real mild wave beach. We did watch a family all out trying their surfing techniques with Mom left on shore to video the gang and it looked like they were having fun.

Behind the beach, the land is a mix of forested hills, small rivers or estuaries, and scattered homes or eco-lodges, giving it a natural, low-density feel – the vibe is quiet and private. Parking is a sandy path that leads down to the oceans edge and you park your car under the shade of the palm trees lining the coastline. Each day we visited, a local approached us with coconuts after we had finished our walk and once we settled on a price, lopped the tops off for us, which was a real treat. It was pretty damn perfect and we ate lunch here three times after a 60 – 90 minute walk. 

I highly recommend spending your days here if you are visiting the area.

Then there was Manuel Antonio National Park

This was the only real disappointment of our entire trip. I’ll try and explain why below.

In order to get to the park, you have no choice but to drive in through Quepos along the winding Route 618, which is jam packed with hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops for miles before you are funnelled out into a beachfront area. At this point, locals, dressed with yellow vests and trying to intimidate you into their parking lots by standing on the road in front of your car and blowing whistles at you as you drive through.

On the beachside, there are hundreds of tourists, scampering for access to the beach, where beach umbrellas and lounge chairs are for rent to the earliest who arrive.

Manuel Antonio National park is Costa Rica’s most visited park and while I had read that, we had no idea just how crowded the area would be. This was definitely not our vibe and we knew that right away.

The park is so popular because it offers something that is easy to appreciate if you are on a short visit, say 1 week. There are jungle trails, beautiful white sand beaches, and the possibility of seeing monkeys, sloths, and tropical birds all within a relatively small accessible area. For travellers with limited time, Manuel Antonio National Park provides a concentrated introduction to the country’s biodiversity.

For travellers like us, who have lots of time on our hands, are experienced hikers and enjoy our solitude, it was just a bad day at a park we had high, and misplaced, expectations for.

Manuel Antonio National Park has become one of the most popular destinations in Costa Rica, and for many visitors it represents their first experience of a tropical rainforest meeting the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, if you are an experienced traveller, this is not the park to visit.

So, why didn’t we like it?

Let’s start with parking. Parking around the entrance is not only confusing, but felt unsafe. At least it did to me and I instantly didn’t like it here. As we drove into town to make the turn towards where the park entrance is, we were swarmed by several men with yellow jackets on walking out into the street in front of our car and blowing whistles for us to ‘Park Here’!

Despite that nonsense, we found the park entrance, went home and booked our tickets to visit, which must be done online. You cannot buy tickets at the gate and the transactional process was very stressful. Their website locked me out twice for some wrong information as you are required to provide them a passport number, email, home address and a telephone number. You had better know the international code for your phone number and don’t use any spaces between characters when you input it.

By the day of our visit, we knew which was ‘legitimate’ parking lot was for the park and drove there directly, paying the $12.00 Canadian daily parking fee. So far so good.

After checking in at our time slot, we then passed through the ‘check your bags for any food’ checkpoint. NO food is allowed inside the park. We watched as they confiscated three rolls of Halls from the backpack of the couple in front of us. Once we were cleared there, we were free to visit the park.

There is a large sign at this point which provides a graphic of the trail system. I strongly suggest you take a photo of it because that’s the last time you will be seeing proper directions within the park.

Immediately after that, two Tour Guide operators approached us, asking if we would like a guided tour, to which we replied no, we’d like to see the park ourselves thank you. A few hundred feet up the wide gravel road, there were several large tour groups stopped across the trail, looking up through a telescopic lens for whatever their guide had spotted and we had to weave our way through them, which means we weren’t paying attention to the actual walk. Having to say excuse me a half dozen times or more was irritating. I understand that these visitors are excited at being in the park and seeing sloths, but the Tour Guides really should maintain better control over their groups, for the sake of other visitors who are doing self guided tours.

As soon as we passed one Tour Guide roadblock, there was another one up in front of us. We could see this being repeated down the trail. At that point, we noticed an exit onto a series of walkways that led through the mangroves and headed for them.

As mentioned above, the signage here was very poor and it was almost impossible to figure out where you were. Yes, we had a small photo on our phones to refer to but…

It just wasn’t doing it for us at all. By 10 am, we had arrived at a junction swarming with people which had restroom facilities, but after waiting in line for ten minutes, discovered they had no toilet paper and no paper or drying facilities for sanitary purposes. I went to find napkins. This was all very frustrating and we decided to go into the ‘restaurant’ just across the trail. In order to do that, you must open a sliding wire fence gate which surrounds the entire structure and close it immediately upon entry. Basically, you lock yourself inside for protection from the monkeys, who have been known to be aggressive and attack people with food here. We each had a fruit bowl and while we were sitting down eating, the little girl beside us asked her Mom why we were in a cage.

From there, we started towards what we thought was the trail out to the end of the peninsula. However, access to that trail means you must pass through the section which leads to the two most accessible beaches, which were jam packed by 10:30 am. While passing along the trail which leads between the two beaches, we realized there were quite a few monkeys in the trees beside us at eye level or on the sand. They are disconcerting because while they’re nor big, they kind of shift towards you a bit, wondering if you are going to feed them or if you have something they could steal. At one point, there was a monkey sitting on the fence with its teeth showing, which made it actually look dangerous.

We found the path leading to the peninsula, walked the length of it quickly, were disappointed with the three lookouts that had been carved out along the trail and left the park. 

Personally, I would avoid Manuel Antonio National Park altogether. There was nothing about it that we liked.

Oh, wait a minute. There was one thing.

The first morning Yim and I went to check out the parking options, we took the time to get out and go and talk to one of the National Park attendants to make sure they were legit. We showed him we had tickets for the following day and were there to scope everything out and do two hours of shopping so would there be someplace he would recommend we park for two hours and he set us up with a spot along the street across from him, free of charge, which was nice.

Yim headed off into the tin-roofed shops which lined the street and I wandered around the periphery, looking for photo ops when I noticed a couple of Capuchin monkeys up above me in a coconut palm, and they were squeezing and testing the coconuts, to see which ones they could twist off. I could see Yim looking at dresses and then looked back up to see the monkey throw the coconut down onto the roof with a very loud bang, which alarmed Yim and the other shoppers. Yim told me later that she turned to the shopkeeper with a questioning look like “Was that a gunshot!?”and the girl shrugged and said; “Monkeys”.

A minute later, I realized that the two monkeys had descended and were eating the broken coconuts. Clever little beasts. That made me smile.

It was my favourite moment in Manuel Antonio National Park.