Río Celeste: Entrance Fee, Online Tickets and the 14:00 Cut-Off
Verified on 26 August 2026, on SINAC’s own page for Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio and on SINAC’s SICORE online reservation portal.
Non-resident adults pay USD 13.56, IVA included; children USD 5.65. Tickets are sold online only — SINAC states they are no longer sold physically at the protected area. The park opens at 08:00, admits its last visitor at 14:00 and closes to the public at 16:00, and it is capped at 1,200 people per day.
The 14:00 last entry is the tighter constraint, not the fee: SINAC’s own published hike time for the trail is about three hours, and the gate shuts two hours before the park does.
Fees and hours
| Non-resident adult | USD 13.56, IVA included |
| Non-resident child | USD 5.65, IVA included |
| National / resident adult | CRC 904, IVA included |
| National / resident child | CRC 565, IVA included |
| Opens | 08:00 daily |
| Last entry | 14:00 |
| Closes to the public | 16:00 |
| Daily cap | 1,200 people |
| Limit on the trail at once | 500 people |
Checked 26 August 2026. SINAC publishes this park’s fees tax-inclusive, which is not how it presents Manuel Antonio’s — that page publishes pre-tax figures. Costa Rican park fees carry 13% IVA either way; here it is already in the number. Residents pay roughly a seventh of the non-resident rate. Both fees sit inside the wider budget on our Costa Rica trip cost page.
The hike the ticket buys
Sendero Misterios del Tenorio: 3 km each way, 6 km round trip, about 3 hours, per SINAC. That is the whole published trail specification — read alongside the 14:00 cut-off, it is what makes the last entry the operative constraint rather than the closing time. And do the arithmetic on the last slot, because SINAC’s page does not do it for you: enter at 14:00 and a three-hour round trip at SINAC’s own published pace ends at 17:00 — an hour after the 16:00 close. To walk the full trail at that pace, book a slot no later than about 13:00.
The two capacity limits are separate and stack: 1,200 people per day, and no more than 500 on the main trail at one time. SINAC publishes both directly on the park page — worth noting, because for Manuel Antonio it publishes no current cap at all.
Buying the ticket
Tickets are sold through SICORE, SINAC’s online purchase and reservation system, at serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr. SINAC states they are available “únicamente a través del sitio web oficial.” Tenorio is in that system on both of the lists SINAC publishes for it — lists that are not the same size. The SICORE portal’s own FAQ names 11 areas sold through it; SINAC’s separate Compra y Reserva en Línea page names 12 areas requiring an advance online reservation, the same eleven plus Los Quetzales. Both pages leave the difference unexplained, and we are not picking a total. Arenal Volcano National Park is on neither list, and sells at its own ticket booth on the day instead.
Online-only ticketing began on 1 August 2023, when SINAC’s Área de Conservación Arenal Tempisque moved Río Celeste ticketing onto SICORE. That date comes from a report of SINAC’s own announcement published on 26 June 2023, so the changeover was the 1 August that followed — a secondary source, though the online-only requirement itself is confirmed on SINAC’s own park page today.
| Rule | Tenorio |
|---|---|
| Tickets per transaction, individual buyer | 10 |
| Tickets per transaction, registered travel agency | 20 |
| Entry slots | six time bands between 08:00 and 14:00 |
| Grace period | ticket holders may enter up to 40 minutes after their chosen slot |
| Refunds | none if you cannot attend |
| Date changes | only if the park closes for an emergency |
| Bad weather | explicitly not grounds for a refund |
| Pets | not permitted in any SINAC protected area |
Tenorio takes SINAC’s default ticket limits of 10 and 20. Only Manuel Antonio, at 6, and Chirripó, at 4, are lower. The six time bands and the 40-minute grace period come from SINAC’s announcement as reported by Radio Santa Clara; the slot system itself is confirmed in SINAC’s general SICORE FAQ.
What the fee covers
Admission only. SINAC states that guiding, equipment rental, food and transfers are separate.
Free-admission days
24 August — National Parks Day — is free for all visitors. The third Wednesday of each month is free for residents and nationals only. Both are system-wide across SINAC protected areas, under decree 16847-MAG-MEP and fee decree 38295-MINAE.
What SINAC doesn’t publish
These are gaps in the official information, not ours:
- A phone number for the park. SINAC’s Tenorio page lists none.
- Distances to the individual landmarks along the trail — the dyeing point, the lagoon, the waterfall and its stair count. SINAC publishes only the 3 km each way / 6 km round trip total. The ICT brochure PDF for this park returned HTTP 404 when we tried it.
- Whether the 1,200-per-day cap is split across the six time bands, and how many tickets each band holds.
- Elevation gain on the Misterios del Tenorio trail.
How we researched this
Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.
On 26 August 2026 we read SINAC’s own Spanish page for Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio — the source for the fees, the 08:00 opening, the 14:00 last entry, the 16:00 close, the 1,200-per-day cap, the 500-at-once trail limit, the trail length and duration, and the online-only ticketing requirement. The ticket limits, entry-slot system, refund and date-change policy, pet rule, free-admission days and what the fee covers come from SINAC’s SICORE portal and its published FAQ. The 1 August 2023 changeover date and the six time bands with a 40-minute grace period come from Radio Santa Clara’s report of SINAC’s official announcement, published 26 June 2023; both are marked here as secondary.
Last verified: 26 August 2026. Park fees, hours and capacity rules change by decree and without notice.
Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.
Sources
- SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio — tax-inclusive fees for non-residents and residents, opening time, 14:00 last entry, 16:00 close, the 1,200/day cap, the 500-person trail limit, the 3 km / 6 km / ~3 hour trail, and the online-only ticketing requirement.
- SINAC — Compra y Reserva en Línea — the competing list of 12 reservation-required areas, which adds Los Quetzales to the portal’s 11.
- SINAC — Sistema de Compra y Reservaciones en Línea (SICORE) — FAQ item 1 for the 11 areas sold through the portal, and FAQ items 6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18, 23 and 28 for the slot system, refunds and date changes, pets, free-admission days, what the fee covers, and the 10 / 20 ticket limits.
- Radio Santa Clara — Entradas al Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio podrán adquirirse en línea — SINAC’s announcement of the 1 August changeover, the six time bands between 08:00 and 14:00 and the 40-minute grace period. Published 26 June 2023; secondary.
Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, has no affiliate relationship with any operator or agency named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.