Playa Manuel Antonio

Playa Manuel Antonio is inside Manuel Antonio National Park, on Costa Rica's central Pacific coast near Quepos. The park is the smallest in the country's system and among the most visited, and the beach is the sheltered cove at its centre.

The wildlife is the reason and also the problem. The park holds sloths, howler and capuchin monkeys, agoutis and a great deal of birdlife within a very small area and a short walk of the entrance, which makes it the most reliable place in Costa Rica to see rainforest animals without effort. That reliability brought numbers the park could not absorb: daily caps, advance online tickets and a weekly closure day have all been introduced, and feeding the animals is prohibited because the capuchins had learned to raid bags and had become aggressive.

The cove itself is white sand in a bay sheltered by headlands, with calm shallow water and a gradual entry — unusual on a Pacific coast that is mostly surf. A tombolo connects Punta Catedral to the mainland, a sand bridge formed between an island and the shore, and it is a textbook example of the landform. Playa Espadilla Sur inside the park is longer and less sheltered, and Playa Espadilla Norte outside the gate is the public beach with the surf schools and no ticket required.

Facilities are those of a well-run park: marked trails, rangers, toilets, and no food sold inside. Everything else is in the town outside the gate, which is dense with hotels along the road up the hill.

The forest reaches the sand, which is why the capuchins are on the beach rather than somewhere behind it, and why your bag must stay closed. Book ahead — numbers are capped and the park closes one day a week — and swim in the cove, which is genuinely calm on a coast that mostly is not.