Costa Rica isn’t easy but…

you need to go!

Costa Rica is “less than easy” to visit for an extended stay when you are on a budget. It is not cheap or convenient to get around, especially without a rental car. There are several challenges, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should visit it. The spectacular nature of this country rivals our safari trip in South Africa and our Amazon jungle adventures in Peru. If you want to see all the best views and wildlife in the world, then you need to add Costa Rica to your bucket list.

At our first Airbnb in La Fortuna, we had a sloth living in our backyard that we go to watch for a whole week. Absolutely incredible! We saw 3 different species of monkeys in multiple different locations. We had regular visits from Capuchin monkeys during our stay in Montezuma and Quepos. I could watch those monkeys all day long and I didn’t have the fear of being attacked like the monkeys in Southeast Asia that get fed by tourists. We also saw vipers, poison dart frogs, coatis, agoutis, racoons, wild boars, and tons of lizard. And so many spectacular birds, but more on that farther down. I want to go back to Costa Rica to just sit in a hammock all day and watch the monkeys.

We were able to see some fantastic waterfalls, rope bridges, hot springs and hiking through some cloud forest jungles and walk in the shadow of some recently active volcanos. Not things you can do in a lot of places. We hung out on several nearly empty beaches and were able to swim in some 87 degree water. Warmer than a lot of our Hawaii and Mexico trips. Our memories of eating at beachside restaurants with some beautiful sunsets are going to stay with us for a while.

I also was able to see a lot of birds. Toucans, parrots, mot mots, scarlet macaws, crested guans, and a quetzal were among the beautiful large birds that we were able to spot. One day in Monteverde we saw 60 different birds in 4 hours with a local bird guide. Altogether we saw 167 different birds with 115 of those being new species for my life list. One regret we have is that we didn’t bring a good camera, and just relied on our cell phones. So many amazing animals and birds, but many mediocre photos. Oh well.

But all the good parts about Costa Rica can’t be mentioned without talking about the challenges. In order to see the wildlife and sights, you need to find ways to overcome some of the countries shortcomings. In this post, I hope to show how we mitigated some of the difficulties in traveling in Costa Rica.

So many people told us that you “have to get a rental car in Costa Rica”. I don’t believe this is true. We resisted getting a car because of the cost, and we didn’t want to navigate the Costa Rican roads. It is one of the only countries in the world that require you to buy the extra rental car insurance, even if you are already covered by your credit card insurance. This means that cars are at least $75 per day plus gas, and a lot more if you would like a car that can handle some of Costa Rica’s infamous rough roads. We were in the country for 6 weeks so we couldn’t justify paying that much for transportation.

Costa Rica has no trains. Some towns are connected by buses, but most of the intercity transport is done in shuttle vans. There are many different companies and it is difficult to navigate their websites and see prices and schedules. We used shuttles from MonteTours, CR Travel, Zuma Tours, and Tropical Tours. The prices were generally $55-$75 per person for a 2-4 hour ride in a 12-15 person van. Not cheap but still cheaper than having a rental car. The Jeep-Boat-Jeep shuttles between La Fortuna and Monteverde was the only one that seemed like a good deal. Only $30 for the trip that includes a shuttle, a boat ride across Lake Arenal and then another shuttle on the other side of the lake. Private transportation was also available but it was about double the cost so we only used it on our trip from the airport on the first night. We also took a bus from Puntarenas to Quepos from TQP CR that was only $5 for a 4 hour journey. And then we took a pink Tracopa bus from Quepos to San Jose for only $8. Way cheaper than the shuttle buses, and we wish these bus companies could develop some more routes. They also need to improve their websites by publishing correct schedules and prices and providing a way to prebook and buy tickets online. The whole shuttle and bus situation in Costa Rica was so frustrating for us after spending most of the fall easily booking trains in France and Spain.

Not having a rental car also made it difficult to get to many of the attractions. Some towns have local buses but schedules are often not posted at bus stops or online. We used the Easyhop shuttle La Fortuna which operates like a shared taxi and only costs $3 per person. Easyhop was in a couple of other towns and also had a few intercity transfers that were a lot more reasonable than some of the other shuttles. In Quepos we took the public bus from town to the beach near Manual Antonio National park for only 65 cents per person. That was awesome, and we wished we had found ways to use local buses elsewhere. But most of the other towns we ended up just walking a lot or taking taxis. We never were able to get an Uber except in the capitol city of San Jose. In Monteverde we took a taxi to the trailhead of a forest reserve. After our hike, we were unable to find a taxi home so we ended up on a much longer hike home in the rain. Not exactly our plan, but we made the best of it and definitely “got our steps in”.

In some of the beach towns like Playa Del Coco and Samara we saw a lot of locals using bikes as their main form of transportation. Unfortunately we never saw a bike path anywhere so the bikes and cars had to share the narrow roadways. Sidewalks were also missing in most towns so pedestrians also had to fit into that dangerous mix. Scooters, cars, golf carts, pedestrians, bikes and noisy quads competing for space does not make for a comfortable atmosphere. Public infrastructure is apparently not a priority for most of the local governments. Yes, we have seen similar in other countries, but somehow in a higher cost/taxed place like Costa Rica, we were a bit surprised; but maybe it’s really just a cultural difference in what the local denizens expect and are comfortable with.

Transportation isn’t the only thing that is expensive in Costa Rica. Restaurant prices were often a shock to the tourists we met. A lot of places had prices that were similar to what we see in the North America. $15 hamburgers and $9 glasses of wine were more than what we had been paying in France and Spain the month before we got to Costa Rica. Some towns had “Sodas” that sold “casado” meals that the locals generally ordered. They consist of rice, beans, fried plantains, a small salad and meat. Not particularly exciting food but we had got fond of them after a while. Local sodas sold casados for about $7 including tax and tip but the restaurants and sodas in the tourist towns had them at $10-12 and were the cheapest things on the menu. We heard that some places had separate menus for locals and tourists with different prices but I was never able to verify that. Grocery store prices were also higher than Europe or America for most items. Transportation costs could be the cause of that but even local meat and fruit seemed a bit high. Staying with the beans and rice meals with some local fish is the tastiest option and was often the cheapest.

Another cost that bothered us was the price of the attractions. It seemed like everything to do cost at least $20 or more. Hikes, waterfalls, hanging bridges, beach parking and hot springs all had big price tags. There are a lot of tourists in Costa Rica and it felt like everything was a tourist attraction. Every park had an entrance fee and guides were always at the entrance looking for additional fees. I am OK with paying for the upkeep of trails, but sometimes I wasn’t sure what we were getting for our fees. Tourism is big business in Costa Rica and it is helping a lot of local people out of poverty so I don’t want to complain too much. I hope that all the fees get to the local people instead of foreign tourist attraction owners.

We stayed for about a week in 6 different locations in Costa Rica. In most locations, that was a lot longer than most of the other tourists and a lot longer than we needed to see all the attractions. A lot of tourists had rental cars and were just staying 2 days to see the attractions in each town. You can see a lot of this country in on a 2 to 3 weeks of faster travel. But that is not the way we want to travel in our retired life, when we have unlimited time. We are used to our slower travel now and never want to get back to the rush-rush of 2 days to see everything.

We heard a lot of tourists mention that they were shocked by the prices of everything in Costa Rica. Some may feel that it is a little overrated. I don’t. I think you just need to be a aware of a countries faults and find the ways to overcome them. With the amount of beauty in this country, everyone should attempt to give it a chance. It is definitely worth it.