Manuel Antonio National Park Guided Tour

Alex was our guide and he was excellent. He kept our 4 year old and 8 year old interested and engaged throughout the tour. We all learned so much and saw so many animals- sloths, monkeys, birds, snakes… Alex was patient and informative and excellent with kids. This was the ideal way to visit the national park!

We had a great private tour with Alex, we saw so many animals that we would not have spotted ourselves, toucan, 4 sloths, crocodile, boa, monkeys and Alex was really informative about all aspects of the trees and animals. We arrived at the park at 7am and it was quiet no queues. A great tour worth every penny.

See below for the tour review. First a little about the logistics leading up to our tour: We initially reached out to a highly recommended guide for Manuel Antonio. He unfortunately had no availability and referred us to Dennis Reyes. The day prior to our tour, Dennis emailed us a reminder and signed "See you tomorrow." During our communication with Dennis, we were always under the impression that he would be our guide. The morning of the tour we were notified they were running 10 minutes late, which turned into more than 25 minutes before our transportation arrived. I asked the person who showed up, David, whether Dennis would meet us at the park, which he confirmed. Arriving at the park with the other people in our group, however, we were informed Dennis would not be our guide, but that David would. The review of the tour begins here: Let me preface by stating the park is beautiful and well worth a visit if you are in the area. We arrived nearly 30 minutes late at the park entrance, which was full of people already. Our guide David added little value to our tour. He seemed to only go by what other guides had already located, never finding anything on his own. Frequently he would take a quick look, but hurry by if he could not find the animal or insect being watched by another group. One incident in particular stood out, where another group of tourists was watching a rainbow grasshopper through their guide's scope. David seemed to be in a rush, but our tour group was eager to see the grasshopper. We assumed he would return when he noticed his group was missing, but he did not. After not being able to locate the grasshopper ourselves, and fruitlessly waiting for David's return, we continued on the trail but did not catch up to David for several minutes. Our guide was missing for more than 10 minutes. We found him with a different group of tourists, focusing his scope on yet another sloth high up in a tree. He pretended that nothing was wrong with his behavior. He offered to take pictures with our phones through his scope, which was nice of him. I mostly used my own camera, but took him up on the offer for a spider I was not able to locate myself. Unfortunately, I realized it was extremely blurry once I had a chance to review it. This photo attached here. David would bring us to information boards posted in the park and pretty much repeat what was written. His English was lacking and consisted of a lot of repetition. I asked him a question about a very unique tree and he responded there are too many trees in the rainforest to know them all. He could not provide a response. He also offered some strange theories about interbreeding snakes that I have not been able to verify. After our excellent tour guides in the Monteverde area, this was a severe let down. In Manuel Antonio National Park, I believe we would be better off without the guide we were provided. It felt like a rip-off. The park itself is beautiful and a good guide would have been great. Unfortunately, this bait and switch method left a bad taste in my mouth.