The story
Festival del Mar Quepos in Quepos/Manuel Antonio
Held each February as a month-long civic celebration, Quepos's Festival del Mar spans parades, public concerts, sporting events and a street carnival through the town's centre. Quepos itself moved from an indigenous Quepoa chiefdom through a 1930s banana-industry boom to today's role as gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park, giving the festival's coastal theme a layered economic history.
Quepos, a town that takes its name from the Quepoa indigenous chiefdom encountered by Spanish explorers in 1519 and later transformed in the 1930s into a major Pacific-coast hub for the United Fruit Company's banana operations, holds its Festival del Mar each February as a month-long civic celebration of the town's coastal identity.