Manuel Antonio National Park is open 26 of the 31 days of March 2027, and March is the driest month of the Manuel Antonio year: 134.8 mm of rain across 7.0 rainy days. The park closes every Tuesday — March 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30 — and one of those, March 23, falls inside Semana Santa, the busiest travel week in Costa Rica. On the other 26 days it runs 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., last entry 2:00 p.m. This page has the rain numbers, the ticket window, the four prices and the Easter-week dates that decide whether March works for you.
Book March 2027 now: WhatsApp Wakoo Tours at +506 8514 1361 or check live dates and availability. Four options, no high-season surcharge: Classic Group $30, Premium $65 all-in, Classic Private $69, V.I.P. Private $100 per person.
Yes, on 26 of the 31 days. The park is closed every Tuesday, which in March 2027 means March 2, March 9, March 16, March 23 and March 30 — five closed days, one more than February, because March 2027 starts on a Monday and has five Tuesdays. Every other day it opens 7:00 a.m. and stops admitting visitors at 2:00 p.m., closing the gate at 3:00 p.m. Source: SINAC, the Costa Rican park authority.
March 1, 2027 is a Monday and March 31 is a Wednesday, so both ends of the month are normal operating days. The date to circle is March 23: it is a closed Tuesday sitting in the middle of Easter week, which is exactly when most visitors assume everything runs.
March is the driest and warmest month of the Manuel Antonio year: 134.8 mm of rain across 7.0 rainy days, 9.0 hours of sun a day, a daytime high of 28.4 °C / 83.1 °F and a night low of 23.9 °C. Source: weather-and-climate.com, Quepos station, Foreca and Copernicus C3S averages 1991 to 2020.
| Month | Rainfall | Rainy days | Sunshine / day | Avg high |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2026 | 503.1 mm | 14.1 | 8.3 h | 27.8 °C |
| January 2027 | 222.7 mm | 10.5 | 9.0 h | 27.6 °C / 81.7 °F |
| February 2027 | 150.8 mm | 7.7 | 8.7 h | 28.1 °C / 82.6 °F |
| March 2027 | 134.8 mm | 7.0 | 9.0 h | 28.4 °C / 83.1 °F |
| April 2027 | 349.1 mm | 8.5 | 8.0 h | 28.3 °C / 82.9 °F |
That April row is the reason March matters. Rain jumps from 134.8 mm to 349.1 mm between March and April — it more than doubles. March is the last month of the dry season, and the difference is not gradual: it is one month.
Yes, on all three measures. 134.8 mm is the lowest monthly rainfall of the twelve, 7.0 rainy days is the fewest, and 9.0 hours of sun a day ties January for the highest. Against December, March has 73% less rain and half the rainy days.
What that buys you on a trail: dry footing on the Sendero Perezoso, a canopy that is not dripping, and a horizon over the Pacific that is actually visible from the Punta Catedral lookout. What it costs you is heat — 28.4 °C is the warmest monthly high of the year, which is the real argument for a 7:00 a.m. entry rather than a midday one. Month-by-month table on our Manuel Antonio weather page.
Exactly two months before your visit date. For March 1, 2027 the window opens January 1, 2027; for March 31, 2027 it opens January 31, 2027. For the Easter-week dates — March 21 to 28 — the windows open January 21 to 28, 2027, and those are the ones that sell out.
Tickets come only from SINAC at serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr. Nothing is sold at the gate. Park entrance is $18.08 for adults and $5.65 for children 2 to 12. For Semana Santa specifically, treat the window-open date as a deadline, not a suggestion: it is the one week of the year when the domestic demand competes with the international demand for the same daily cap.
If setting a January alarm for a March trip is not realistic, the Premium $65 option buys the ticket for you the day its window opens, with transport included.
Park entrance is $18.08 per adult and $5.65 per child aged 2 to 12, paid to SINAC. Wakoo Tours publishes four guided options, and none of them carries an Easter-week or dry-season surcharge, all per person:
| Option | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Classic Group | $30 | ICT-certified guide, Swarovski spotting scope, photos and video. Park ticket not included. |
| Premium | $65 | All-in: park ticket and hotel transport included. Shared group. |
| Classic Private | $69 | Private guide, only your group on the walk. |
| V.I.P. Private | $100 | Flexible departure time, private guide, a scope that is never shared. |
A family of two adults and two children on the Classic Group in March pays $120 for the tour plus $47.46 in entrance fees: $167.46. The full arithmetic, including what each option does and does not include, is in our Manuel Antonio tour cost guide.
The same residents as every month: three-toed and two-toed sloths, white-faced capuchins, howler monkeys, Central American squirrel monkeys, agoutis, iguanas and more than a hundred bird species. What March changes is that the dry canopy thins the leaf cover, so a sloth 25 metres up is a clearer silhouette than it is in October, and the animals concentrate near the remaining water — which makes them easier to find and easier to predict.
March is also the end of the Pacific humpback season, which runs roughly December through March, and that is a beach-and-boat sighting, not a trail one. No sighting can be promised in any month. A guide with a Swarovski scope changes the odds and the quality of the look, not the certainty.
7:00 a.m., and in March that matters more than in any other month. The night low is 23.9 °C and the daytime high is 28.4 °C, the warmest of the year, with 9.0 hours of direct sun. A 7:00 a.m. start puts the whole walk inside the cool part of the day and inside the two hours when the animals are most active. Last entry is 2:00 p.m., which in March is the hottest and quietest hour on the trail.
All our March tours leave at 7:00 a.m. The V.I.P. Private $100 option is the one that moves the departure time if a flight or a hotel checkout makes 7:00 a.m. impossible.
Not legally. What the $30 buys is a trained eye and a scope. Even with March’s thinner canopy, a sloth reads as a brown clump to an untrained eye; our guides find it and frame it in a Swarovski scope at 25x. They are ICT-certified — the Costa Rican tourism board credential — and Wakoo Tours holds 4.9 out of 5 across 259 TripAdvisor reviews.
In Easter week there is a second reason: the trail is crowded, and a guide who knows where the troops move at 7:15 a.m. is the difference between watching monkeys and watching the backs of other visitors.
For a normal March date, booking two to three months out is comfortable. For March 21 to 28 — Semana Santa — book now. That week combines the peak of Costa Rican domestic travel with international dry-season demand against a fixed daily entry cap, and it has a closed Tuesday inside it, which pushes everyone who planned for March 23 onto March 22 and March 24.
Booking the tour early costs nothing extra and locks the guide; the SINAC ticket still has to wait for its own two-month window. Our open-dates calendar shows how the closed Tuesdays fall across the season.
Move it one day. The five closed Tuesdays are March 2, March 9, March 16, March 23 and March 30, and the gate does not open at all on those days, ticket or no ticket. March 23 is the one that catches people out, because it sits inside Easter week when everything else in Manuel Antonio is running at full capacity.
A closed Tuesday is not a wasted day here. The mangrove boat tour, the catamaran, the waterfall and the zip line all run on Tuesdays, and Playa Biesanz and Playita sit outside the park boundary and stay open. Send us your Tuesday and we will tell you what actually runs.
March is drier, February is emptier. March: 134.8 mm, 7.0 rainy days, 9.0 hours of sun, 28.4 °C, five closed Tuesdays, and Semana Santa on March 21-28. February: 150.8 mm, 7.7 rainy days, 8.7 hours of sun, 28.1 °C, four closed Tuesdays, and no peak week at all.
The 16 mm of rain that separates them is inside the noise of a single afternoon shower. The Easter week is not. If your dates are flexible and you want the quietest trail of the high season, take February; the numbers for that month are on our February 2027 page. If you are locked into March, take the first three weeks over the last one.
Message us on WhatsApp with your March date and how many people: +506 8514 1361. Say which of the four options you want — Classic Group $30, Premium $65 all-in, Classic Private $69 or V.I.P. Private $100 — or describe your group and we will tell you which one fits. You can also see live dates and availability here.
If your date is one of the five closed Tuesdays, or inside Easter week where the ticket window is the real constraint, we will tell you before you pay.