Two of our four Manuel Antonio options include round-trip hotel transport and two do not. The Premium at $65 per person includes round-trip hotel transport for hotels in Quepos and along the Manuel Antonio road, plus the national park ticket and a fresh fruit snack. The VIP Private at $100 per person includes private round-trip transport, the ticket, the snack and a Costa Rican lunch. The Classic Group at $30 and the Classic Private at $69 are guide-only: no transport, no ticket. That is the whole answer, and the rest of this page is the detail — pick-up zones, pick-up times, what happens if you are sleeping further away, and the nine Tuesdays the park is closed this December and January. Prices and inclusions here are the ones published on our Manuel Antonio National Park guided tour page.
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Book the December 2026 tour with transport included · WhatsApp +506 8514-1361
Transport is included in the Premium ($65 per person, shared) and in the VIP Private ($100 per person); it is not included in the Classic Group ($30 per person, shared) or in the Classic Private ($69 per person). This matters more than it looks, because the two options that do not include transport also do not include the park entrance ticket — they are guide-only products for travellers who already have a rental car or a driver and who buy their own ticket online.
The Classic Group price of $30 is not going up and it is not a stripped version of the Premium: it is the same ICT-certified bilingual naturalist, the same Swarovski spotting scope and the same free 4K photos and videos. The difference between $30 and $65 is not the guide. It is the ride, the ticket and the snack, bought as one thing instead of three.
Here is every option with its transport line exactly as it is published on our tour page, so there is nothing to interpret on the day.
| Option | Price / person | Round-trip transport | Park ticket | Snack | Lunch | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classic Group (shared, max. 10) | $30 | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included | 2 hours |
| Premium (shared, max. 10) — most popular | $65 | Included — Quepos · Manuel Antonio | Included | Included | Not included | 2–4 hours |
| Classic Private (only your party) | $69 | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included | 2 hours |
| VIP Private (only your party) | $100 | Private round-trip transport included | Included | Included | Costa Rican lunch (casado) included | 3–4 hours |
The Premium is the one most travellers pick, and the reason is written in its own description: the whole morning is handled door to door and there is nothing else to pay on the day. If you want the guide to yourself as well, the Manuel Antonio private tour page compares the two private options in more detail.
The included transport on the Premium covers hotels in Quepos and hotels along the Manuel Antonio road, which is the corridor that runs from Quepos down to Playa Espadilla and the park entrance. Those are the three pick-up areas, and none of them is far — the entire zone sits inside a 7 km strip.
| Where your hotel is | Driving distance to the park gate | Driving time |
|---|---|---|
| Quepos town centre | 7.4 km | 14 min |
| Manuel Antonio road, mid-hill hotels | 4.0 km | 8 min |
| Playa Espadilla, the beach end of the road | 1.0 km | 2 min |
Those three figures were measured on the OSRM routing engine on 26 September 2026 from the centre of each area to the park gate. Our Manuel Antonio tour from Quepos page publishes the Quepos number as 7.1 km and 14 minutes, measured the same day from a slightly different point in town; treat anything between those two readings as the real range. A routing engine does not know your hotel driveway, and the hills on the Manuel Antonio road are steep, so we build a few minutes of margin into every pick-up time.
If your hotel is outside that corridor — and that includes everything south past Playa Biesanz or north past the Quepos bridge — tell us the hotel name when you book. We either extend the run or we tell you honestly that it does not work and you meet us instead. What we do not do is promise a pick-up we cannot make at 5 in the morning.
Manuel Antonio National Park opens at 7:00 a.m. and the big bus groups land between 9:00 and 10:30 a.m., so the pick-up time is not a logistics detail — it is the single biggest thing separating a morning with sloths and squirrel monkeys from a morning of queueing. From a Quepos or Manuel Antonio hotel a 6:30 a.m. departure puts you inside the gate at about 6:44 a.m., roughly two hours before the buses.
We cannot promise you will see a particular animal. What we can promise is being at the gate before the crowds, with a guide who knows which trees the sloths were in yesterday and a Swarovski scope on a tripod.
The included transport on the Premium does not reach Jacó, Dominical, Uvita, La Fortuna, Monteverde or Liberia, and pretending otherwise would waste your morning. What we do instead is publish the measured driving distance from each of those towns so you can decide whether to drive in, hire a private transfer, or move your hotel for one night.
| Where you are sleeping | Distance to the gate | Driving time | The page with the detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quepos | 7.1 km | 14 min | Tour from Quepos |
| Dominical | 49.6 km | 1 h 02 min | Tour from Uvita and Dominical |
| Uvita | 69.5 km | 1 h 25 min | Tour from Uvita and Dominical |
| Jacó | 73.2 km | 1 h 32 min | Tour from Jacó |
| La Fortuna / Arenal | see page | see page | Tour from La Fortuna |
| Monteverde | see page | see page | Tour from Monteverde |
| Liberia Airport (LIR) | see page | see page | Tour from Liberia Airport |
The four distances with a number were measured on the OSRM routing engine on 26 September 2026. The three that say “see page” are far enough that a single number is misleading — those pages tell you plainly that the trip is not a comfortable day trip and that the right move is to sleep on this coast. The tour from Jacó, Quepos and Dominical hub compares the nearby origins in one place, and the Manuel Antonio transport guide covers buses, shuttles, domestic flights and driving.
On the Premium at $65 the ride is the smallest part of the value: you also get the park entrance ticket bought and reserved for you, an ICT-certified bilingual naturalist guide for 2 to 4 hours, the Swarovski spotting scope, free 4K photos and videos of the animals you see, and a fresh fruit snack. Lunch is not included on the Premium; it is included on the VIP Private as a Costa Rican casado.
Tours are led by Jason Solano Zamora, ICT-certified naturalist guide with 17 years in Manuel Antonio, and our trained guide team. The guiding is identical on all four options — you are not buying a lesser guide when you buy the $30 Classic Group, you are buying less logistics.
Children aged 3 to 12 pay $10 less than the adult price on every option, and infants aged 0 to 2 join free. With transport included that means the Premium is $65 per adult and $55 per child, and the VIP Private is $100 per adult and $90 per child. On the guide-only options it is $20 per child on the Classic Group and $59 per child on the Classic Private.
There is no minimum age published for our tours. The park entrance ticket is charged separately at $18.50 per adult and $5.65 per child, and it is already inside the Premium and VIP Private prices — on the two Classic options you buy it yourself online before you arrive.
Manuel Antonio park tickets are sold only online through SINAC, Costa Rica’s national park service, they open a maximum of two months before your visit, and they are not sold at the gate. That two-month window is the reason a December trip has to be booked in October and a January trip in November: there is no late option, no counter, no cash at the entrance.
If you book the Premium or the VIP Private, we buy that ticket for you inside the price and you never touch the SINAC site. If you book the Classic Group or the Classic Private, the Manuel Antonio park tickets page walks through the purchase step by step. Every year we meet travellers at the gate holding a hotel voucher and no SINAC ticket, and there is nothing anyone can do for them at that point.
Manuel Antonio National Park is closed every Tuesday, which removes nine dates from the December 2026 – January 2027 window: December 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, and January 5, 12, 19 and 26. There is no transport, no guide and no ticket on those days because there is no park.
If your only free morning is a Tuesday, say so when you write to us and we will put you on something that is open instead of selling you a closed gate. That is the whole point of asking before we take your money.
The transport-included product sold on the big marketplaces is the same kind of product we run ourselves, and when you book it there a platform commission rides on top of it. Booking direct gets you the same ICT-certified guide, the same Swarovski scope and the same 4K photos with no platform commission in between, and it gets you a WhatsApp number that answers instead of a ticket queue. Our main tour page sets out the direct-versus-marketplace comparison in full.
The practical difference on the day is who you talk to when your flight is late or your child wakes up sick. Write to us and you are talking to the company that owns the vehicle and employs the guide.
Send us the hotel name, the date and how many adults and children, and we confirm the pick-up time and the vehicle the same day. Because of the SINAC two-month window, a December date has to be confirmed in October at the latest if you want the ticket included.
Book your December 2026 Manuel Antonio tour with transport · WhatsApp +506 8514-1361 · see all Manuel Antonio tours
One of the four published options includes hotel pickup: the Premium shared tour at $65 per person, which covers round-trip hotel pickup in Quepos and along the Manuel Antonio road plus the park entrance ticket. The $30 Classic group tour does not include any transport — you meet the guide at the park gate and pay the SINAC ticket separately. The two private options, Classic Private at $69 and VIP Private at $100 per person, are built around the hotel you are actually staying in: send us the hotel name on WhatsApp and we confirm the pickup in writing before you pay anything.
The practical rule is simpler than the price list: if your hotel sits inside the Quepos–Manuel Antonio corridor, the ride is a solved problem. That corridor is short. Measured with OSRM road routing on 26 September 2026, Quepos town is 7.1 km and about 14 minutes from the park gate, the Manuel Antonio road itself is 4.0 km and 8 minutes, and Playa Espadilla is 1.0 km and 2 minutes. Nobody inside that corridor is more than a quarter of an hour from the entrance, so what you are buying with the transport-included price is not distance saved — it is the 7 a.m. opening hit on time, with someone else driving and parking.
Yes, if your hotel is in Quepos, on the Manuel Antonio road or at Playa Espadilla, and the whole thing takes five steps. One: you send the hotel name to WhatsApp at +506 8514-1361. Two: we reply with your pickup time in writing, worked backwards from the 7:00 a.m. park opening — most Quepos hotels are a 6:15–6:30 a.m. lobby pickup, the Manuel Antonio road hotels a little later, because the gate is only minutes away. Three: the guide meets you in the lobby, not at a corner or a bus stop. Four: you enter the park at opening, which is when the howlers, the capuchins and the sloths are still moving and the trails are still empty. Five: the same vehicle returns you to the same lobby.
If you are staying outside that corridor, hotel pickup from your hotel is not part of the $65 price, and we would rather tell you the driving number than sell you a transfer. Measured with OSRM on 26 September 2026: Jacó is 73.2 km and about 1 hour 32 minutes to the gate, Uvita is 69.5 km and about 1 hour 25 minutes, and Dominical is 49.6 km and about 1 hour 2 minutes. From any of those you drive yourself, leave early enough to be at the entrance for the 7:00 a.m. opening, and we meet you there — the tour is identical once you are inside. Two more things worth knowing before you lock a date: SINAC only opens park tickets about two months ahead, so a December date usually cannot be ticketed until October, and the park is closed every Tuesday, which rules out December 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 of 2026 and January 5, 12, 19 and 26 of 2027.
The Premium at $65 per person includes round-trip hotel transport for Quepos and Manuel Antonio hotels, and the VIP Private at $100 per person includes private round-trip transport. The Classic Group at $30 and the Classic Private at $69 do not include transport.
Hotels in Quepos town and hotels along the Manuel Antonio road down to Playa Espadilla, a corridor of about 7.4 km end to end. Give us the hotel name when you book; if it sits outside that corridor we either extend the run or we tell you so and arrange a meeting point.
No. The Classic Group at $30 per person is guide-only: it includes the ICT-certified bilingual guide, the Swarovski scope and the free 4K photos, but not the transport and not the park entrance ticket. It is built for travellers with their own car.
Around 6:15 to 6:30 a.m. for the 7:00 a.m. park opening, confirmed by WhatsApp the evening before with the driver’s name. From Quepos or Manuel Antonio a 6:30 a.m. departure has you inside the gate at about 6:44 a.m., roughly two hours before the tour buses arrive.
Not inside the included Premium transport. Those are 73.2 km, 49.6 km and 69.5 km from the gate respectively, measured on the OSRM routing engine on 26 September 2026. Each of those towns has its own page with the driving times and the departure hour that works; write to us and we will quote a private transfer if you want one.
Yes on both transport-included options: the Premium and the VIP Private include the SINAC entrance ticket in the price, so you never use the SINAC site. On the two Classic options you buy it yourself online, at $18.50 per adult and $5.65 per child, and it is never sold at the gate.
Children aged 3 to 12 pay $10 less than the adult price on every option, so the Premium is $55 per child and the VIP Private is $90 per child. Infants aged 0 to 2 join free. There is no minimum age published for our tours.
No, the park is closed every Tuesday, which rules out December 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 and January 5, 12, 19 and 26. Tell us your dates and we will put you on an open day or on a tour that does not depend on the park.
Yes. The Premium shared tour at $65 per person includes round-trip hotel pickup for hotels in Quepos and along the Manuel Antonio road, and it also includes the park entrance ticket. The $30 Classic group tour does not include transport or the ticket.
Not inside the $65 price. Jacó is 73.2 km and about 1 hour 32 minutes from the park gate, Uvita 69.5 km and about 1 hour 25 minutes, and Dominical 49.6 km and about 1 hour 2 minutes — all measured with OSRM road routing on 26 September 2026. From those towns you drive yourself and meet the guide at the entrance for the 7:00 a.m. opening; the tour itself is the same once you are inside.