How To Get Around Manuel Antonio Without a Car

When we visited Costa Rica in April, we flew into San José, but our actual destination for our trip was Manuel Antonio. That meant we had to decide how we were going to get to Manuel Antonio from San José. While some of the most popular options are renting a car or hiring a private shuttle, we decided to take a bus. But this also meant that we were going to have to spend our week in Manuel Antonio without a car.

I was initially nervous about getting around the Manuel Antonio/Quepos area without a car. Since I’d never been there before, I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. Would we have to walk miles to get to restaurants or the beach? Would there be taxis, and if so, would they be easy to find when you needed one? In the end, we stuck with our original plan to take the bus to Manuel Antonio and wing it from there. And it turned out great.

So if you’re planning your own trip to Costa Rica, here’s how you can get around Manuel Antonio without a car.

Bus: Cheap and Convenient

When we arrived at our lodging in Manuel Antonio, the house manager Lorena was kind enough to explain everything we needed to know about Manuel Antonio’s public buses.

For just 410 Costa Rican Colones (CRC), or about $0.75 USD per trip, you can hop on a bus traveling along the main road (National Route 618) between Quepos and Manuel Antonio. The buses come regularly, about every 15 minutes, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. From 8 to 10 p.m., the frequency decreases to about every half-hour to hour.

The fare stays the same no matter the time, but just be sure you have enough money in cash because you won’t be able to pay with cards. The driver typically has change for bills smaller than 5,000 CRC.

While the bus stops aren’t really clearly marked, you can generally ask any shop, restaurant, or local resident where the closest stop is, and they’ll point you in the right direction. Just remember you need to stand on the east side of the road if you want to go north toward Quepos, and stand on the west side of the road if you want to go south toward Manuel Antonio National Park. There’s also an app that is supposed to provide bus tracking, but we didn’t find it to be very accurate.

Overall, the bus was our preferred method of traveling between Manuel Antonio and Quepos, and anywhere in between. It was cheap, reliable, and easy to figure out.

Taxi: Reliable and Simple

Of course, the bus only goes along the main road and only at certain times. Outside of that, a taxi will probably be your best bet for getting around Manuel Antonio without a car of your own.

Official taxis in Costa Rica are red with a yellow triangle on the side. You’ll find them at the taxi stand outside the bus station in Quepos, or driving along the main road. Most of the time, it’s easy enough to flag one down when you need one.

A lot of the articles I read about taxis in Manuel Antonio told me to ensure you set the price with them in advance when you get in the car, as they don’t really use their meters. Being the only one in my group who spoke Spanish, that was up to me, and I think I did it maybe once when we took our first taxi ride. After that, I kind of just asked them when we arrived at our destination how much we owed. And no one tried to overcharge us. In fact, I accidentally handed one driver double the amount he’d asked for because I’d misunderstood him, and he gave me the excess back to me.

Typically, I think it cost about 4,000 to 5,000 Costa Rican Colones (CRC) to get between Quepos and Manuel Antonio, which is about $7.50 to $9.30 in USD. Not too bad, especially when you’re splitting it between three people like we were.

One more note about taxis: Sometimes, you can choose to pay taxi drivers in either CRC or USD. This can be useful if you have spare USD in your wallet that you’re trying to use because you’re trying to save your CRC cash for other things. For example, some taxi drivers would tell us the fare was 5,000 CRC or $10 USD. While it’s slightly less favorable to pay in USD from a cost perspective, sometimes it makes more sense.

Uber: Convenient but Unreliable

The biggest downside of taking a taxi — at least for these millennial travelers — is the fact that we always had to pay in cash. When you’ve only taken so much money out of an ATM and you don’t know how many things you’ll be doing that require cash payment, we wanted to pay with a card whenever possible.

Enter… Uber.

Now, when we’d arrived in San José at the beginning of our trip and ordered Ubers to take us to our hotel, our Uber drivers made it very clear that Uber was actually illegal in Costa Rica. One driver told us that police would check cars suspected of being Ubers near the airport.

But in Manuel Antonio and Quepos, nobody really cared if people were using Uber. Also, Ubers were often half the cost of taking a red taxi. Add in the fact that you can order Ubers on demand to pick you up wherever you are, and taking Ubers everywhere sounds like a no-brainer.

The only problem is the fact that there are mayyyyybe one or two Ubers operating in the whole Manuel Antonio-Quepos area at any given time. A few times, we’d try to order one near our Airbnb and it would say a driver who was all the way in Quepos accepted it, but he was 15 minutes away. And somehow, he just wouldn’t move at all and we’d be standing there waiting for 20 minutes for an Uber that was never going to come. So we’d begin our trek to the main road in search of a red taxi.

My word of advice is that it’s usually worth it to check whether an Uber is available, but if not, move on to Plan B pretty quickly. Also, if you do manage to snag an Uber, be sure to tip well, considering your ride is probably going to cost like $2 USD.

 

There you have it… three ways to get around Manuel Antonio without a car.

What else do you want to know about Manuel Antonio or transportation in Costa Rica? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

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