Planning of Costa Rica and San Jose
In Spain, in Madrid, we were all ill. “Don’t want to leave the apartment” ill. We got better by the time of the flight, but not a 100%. Reet was feeling better than I was, before the flight. But… flying has never suited Reet, neither did this flight (direct one from Madrid to San Jose). So, Reet got more ill after the flight than what she was in Madrid.
But I got a bit carried away here, let’s take a step back... It’s a totally new country and continent, so a little backstory, please!
Okay, “Why Costa Rica?” you ask?
As I mentioned earlier, after we visited Costa Rica a few years back with a cruise ship, Reet has had a dream to come back to Costa Rica (meaning: actually visit it, not take a half-a-day tour and sail away). At random times in the past, she had shown me pictures of Costa Rica’s waterfalls and talked about how there are so-so many hiking trails there, to get me excited to go one day.
So, naturally, when we planned our half-a-year, Costa Rica was on our Wishlist (next to my Iceland, Norway, Faroe Islands and western side of Canada and her Japan, Australia and New Zealand and our US with Hawaii and Africa). As almost everything in our list was out of our reach due to Covid (and hadn’t there been Covid, then it would have been our budget probably) and Costa Rica was open and in Reet’s words, also cheaper than Europe, it was a no-brainer to start our journey to another Continent from (t)here.
Okay, “How did you plan your trip to Costa Rica?” you ask?
It was easy. I did almost nothing. But, Reet, if I remember correctly, googled for days for all the different national parks and sights and activities, saved them all on google maps and said: “You know, Dario, there’s just so much to do there and some are cluttered, but the clutters are hours from each other”.
When we first thought about where and what, we planned for a month in each country. But as Reet said, there’s just so much to do there, we decided on 2 months in Costa Rica. Also. First, we thought > just one place the whole time, but as there was just so much to do and see, we planned on ~2 weeks in different locations > That plan was messed up a bit later as well, but we’ll come back to that, well, later.
Just a note to self:
If you plan to be in one place, then it’s only natural that you won’t see everything, but instead you get to experience the place you’re at, on a deeper level.
What a load of crap… to be in a tourist city/village/area for a long time. Who would want to experience it on a deeper level, the stupidest thing to ever do.
“How did you plan to and moved around Costa Rica?”
Well, by car of course. There are busses, they say, that drive you to a location from a location. And even cars with drivers that drive you for hours and for only 200 euros or more. We had more money than busses required and not enough for a driver, sad. Also, the freedom that a personal car gives you... You can not underestimate it. Especially with us. We get restless after a few days in one location. And a car helps to contain our urges, we’d sometimes drive for 1,5 hours one way for a sight worth 15 minutes of our time just to get out of the house.
Getting the car for 2 months was a pain in the ass, though.
First of all, I’m travelling with 3 women, so naturally we have a lot of luggage (not that much actually, just 3 large suitcases plus a lightweight stroller).
Secondly, while we went there on the 06th of November, the high season started sometime in December, so our car rental period fit perfectly into the high season.
Also, if you read the blogs from Americans. They all say “you must rent a 4x4” or you’ll die.
So, some companies said that they don’t have a car at all that would fit our luggage and some said that the price would be about 6-8k EUR for our “dream” car (waay over our budget for a car). Offering a “lesser version” for 3-4k EURos. “Lesser version” meant that it wasn’t a 4x4 and would maybe fit or maybe not fit all our 3 suitcases, and don’t get me started on fitting the stroller.
It was just ~6 days before our flight when I was finally able to book a lesser car for us knowing fair well that we might get rid of the third suitcase when we get our car and just throw everything on the floor and next to the children etc like crazy homeless people. And I did a great job, I got a great deal. 2700 EUR without Zero deductible insurance and ~3200 with zero deductible insurance. Naturally I took the second option, because I always do. I was happy to have done such a great job and have something, but wasn’t content yet. There was still time to cancel the booking and find a better company. I went ahead and opened google maps and opened all the links on the google maps for all the “lesser known” car rentals and wrote to them directly – the lesser known ones, meaning not their big brothers like Alamo and Sixt etc. The rental company, I had the booking with currently, was Adobe rent a car. It sits kind of between the big brothers and the what I’d like to call the “family” companies. Adobe rent a car is a company that the American bloggers praise and say that you should book with them and not even look farther – I guess they make great deals for instagrammers and bloggers etc. Anyway. Some responded straight away, that they can’t help me because of the high season being in my request, but then… Like a few hours before my “free cancellation time with Adobe”, a really shady company replied to me: Payara Rent a car.
It was shady, because I had written to them several days earlier with no response from them and now, just a few days before the rental start, they responded. Okay, I wanted to know more, because they offered me a car that was 2000 dollars + 400 dollars deposit in cash for 2 months. That was like… A whole lot of less money than what I was going to pay. And while maybe not bigger than the car Adobe offered, the boot was definitely bigger based on comparison I did on Google.
So, to secure my car, I had to pay 50 dollars to some random Paypal account. I thought to myself. What the fuck. But did it anyway, not a big loss if a scam. They confirmed that the payment was received and that someone would be waiting for me at the airport and I cancelled my booking with Adobe.
It was all so sketchy that I even wrote to them on the morning of our flight that we’ll be coming, because I had no official proper confirmation e-mail or anything like that, didn’t get a response, because, well… airplane mode.
Now, when we landed and I turned on wifi. They had contacted me through WhatsApp (which turns out to be the shit in this part of the world), had said where they wait for me and we’d give each other status updates on our progress through passport control etc.
They had the baby seat for us for free like we asked and they promised. He filled some gaps on a document for 15 minutes with my information, I paid the 2400 dollars and off we went.
Yada yada yada…
A week before we were supposed to bring the car back, they asked politely when and where we’d like to do that and a day before they confirmed that they’ll be there. A guy was indeed there at the airport to take the car back. He just checked that we didn’t leave anything in the car (didn’t check if there are any dents on the car or anything), gave us our 400 dollars deposit back and off we went. Like, by far the best car rental service that I have had. Still a sketchy start, but… smooth after. Now, I wasn’t worried anyway, because even if they had found something wrong with the car (that they couldn’t have, because the car was fine), I would have lost only 400 dollars. Cost in total would still have been less than what Adobe offered me.
Of course. Adobe’s car would probably have been newer, ours had 100 000 km’s behind it, but it did it’s job well as you will read later without any weird sounds or even a broken tire for 2 long months.
Okay, very interesting about the car, but “where in costa rica?”.
“Go and live like a local”. This you probably don’t want to do. Well, maybe you do, but not us - me with a 11-year-old and a 1-year-old and a lady. That’s not for us, or for most tourists, I think, if you want to get the “costa rica experience” everyone’s talking about.
I mean: Do you want to live in San Jose, go to work and maybe drive 1,5 hours one way to a beach on some weekend? Or do you want to actually see stuff that probably even some locals haven’t seen (because they don’t seem very rich and seeing stuff takes money and also: I live in Estonia, I haven’t gone to every possible place in Estonia either, especially when it means being there with like a million tourists).
So, the places that Reet found and the initial plan:
Corcovado national park – Too far away for us. Just some jungle, we’d see the jungle in other places as well. In retrospect, we should have taken the few extra hours to drive and stay there for a week or two. Probably would have been the best place ever to enjoy the nature (as it’s very far away and should thus be the less busiest of all the places)
Manual Antonio – Our first location, stay there for 10 days. Some nice beaches and one of the most popular and highest rated small national park with a waterfall close by.
Monteverde – our second location. Stay there for 2 weeks. Deep inside the rainforest, should be cool. Cloud forest, hanging bridges, zip lines, hello jungle.
Arenal – our third location, stay there for 2 weeks. An active volcano (not active active, but something that did it’s last job on 1968 or something) that you can view from your home every morning. A pretty sight for sure… Again, with a waterfall, zip lines and hanging bridges.
Nicoya peninsula (Tamarindo, Samara) – not worth the trouble, we’re already visiting Manuel Antonio for a beach vacation. And we’d like to think we’re off the beaten path travellers, so Monteverde and Arenal are more for us.
Somewhere on the eastern Caribbean side as well. It’s said that it’s less crowdy and has more of a chill vibe. And we’d like to think we’re chill people. Our Fourth location – spend the Christmas there, chilling.
Tortuguero – Place people go to to see a lot of and big turtles. It was not Turtle season, so no point in going there.
Come back to San Jose for new year’s and then to the next country…. Wait… Wait…
So, now while I was dealing with the car, Reet was booking accommodations to all those chosen locations – with free cancellation policy, so we can book ahead, but we can still be flexible when plans change. And we’d maybe have better choices when booking weeks ahead, rather than just booking 3-4 days before going there. Still, turns out that Costa Rica’s accommodation is not cheap at all (maybe booking weeks ahead, is not enough, people probably book months ahead), especially during the high season and Reet said that we shouldn’t spend our Christmas there. We should instead move on to Mexico before Christmas to cut costs (very unlike Reet, to suggest cutting costs). Now, Dario, being brainwashed by Reet, said that we decided to be here for 2 months, and we should be here for 2 months. Besides, we’re already in the process of booking a car for 2 months and as the options are limited, I don’t want a discussion about date changes. Also, who says that Mexico would be cheaper in any way (spoiler, it isn’t). She should instead try to lower her standards and find us a place for Christmas still for cheap. She didn’t, so we just decided that as there’s still time, let’s deal with that a few weeks later, when already in Costa Rica.
So, that was our plan. Some well-chosen (a few hours spend on one area) accommodations (to which we will come back later when we’re talking about the specific areas) booked, a car booked, flight to Costa Rica booked, even the form filled that was required to be filled before the flight (that many in the check-in line didn’t know).
About that airport check-in.
Now, that was a fun thing. We’d go to the airport to the check-in counters the screens said we should go. There was even a separate line for families. They, of course, sent us to other check-in counters because the screens were wrong. Those counters did not have a line for families, only for those who paid more (and we don’t pay more).
There we stood for like 45 minutes to get to the counter. And then the fun started. It’s our fault, we kind of knew that this could happen, but didn’t care enough before. We hadn’t booked a flight away from Costa Rica. And You must have a booking for a flight to show to them, or you’re not going to get on the plane.
So, luckily, we had done some thinking and research ahead of time and knew that we wanted to go to Mexico next. Because it, again, lets people in freely, covid or not and we knew that there are some good ticket prices either on 22.12 30.12 or 01.01. We did our quick decision that we’d leave on 30.12 and be in Mexico for New Year’s Eve, bought the tickets and were happy that we had done the research before. Finally, we got our end date to Costa Rica set. No going back now.
Now, in retrospect, we should have booked the tickets like we did. But after arriving in Costa Rica, we should have cancelled our tickets. That’s what people did who actually went to Nicaragua by land from Costa Rica – bought tickets and cancelled after reaching costa rica (they had no other choice). Our tickets had the same clause. When you cancel within 24 hours, you get all your money back. We of course didn’t (spoiler, I tried to, at one point, maybe about a month in, change the dates at least, but wasn’t allowed after 24 hours had passed).
But hey. It’s Costa Rica. It’s Reet’s dream vacation/location. Surely, we’re okay being here for that long and, surely, we can survive if we’d want to stay for 3 months, but need to leave on 30.12, we can always come back to Costa Rica in the future.
Enough of that planning talk. Let’s get back to Reet being ill.
San Jose and initial thoughts about Costa Rica
We were in San Jose for some nights before actually going anywhere.
We knew, that there’s really nothing to do there (or rather, thought that), but we figured that if we have a problem with getting the rental car, then we’d have a buffer to still find one. Also, we sent some stuff home that we needed/wanted to replace and just buy new stuff when reaching Costa Rica, for example baby cot and local Sim cards. San Jose would be the only place we could do that in Costa Rica as every other location is going to be just a small expensive tourist village that just doesn’t have some of these things (baby cot).
As Reet was ill, she didn’t want to do anything. Or rather, couldn’t do anything, for the first couple of days.
It was then mine and Saskia’s responsibility to go shopping for food, SIM cards and a Baby Cot. Found a Huge Shopping mall that made us feel like we were still in Europe.
Food we bought.
We also got the Sim cards, it was super easy. Just go to the Kölbi store, show your passport, pay like 12 dollars and you’re all set for a month with 4gb data. I’m still wondering if some other company would have given me a better deal, but then again, for 12 dollars and no problems with Service, why would I even think that? Why?
The baby cot we never bought, because… The cheapest was ~110 EUR and the first 3 locations we had, provided a baby cot for us (and later we had no place to buy it, so Emmi is not used to sleeping in her own bed any more again) and I’m not paying 110 EUR for something that I should be able to get for ~50 EUR (it would have been cheaper taking our own baby cot with us from Europe by plane (80EUR), so… Emmi was collateral damage to my stubbornness.
And it was my responsibility to entertain Emmi outside the apartment. I, of course, made Saskia come with me. So, our first adventure to nature in Costa Rica began. And what an adventure it was.
We had done our research. A large park almost next to our apartment complex, only 30 minutes by foot. Would have been less, if not for a river in between us. Also, unfortunately, inaccessible by foot, because the only way there is on a multi-lane road that’s without a sidewalk. So, by car it was. We found parking only a few blocks away from the park.
It was a bit frustrating to get there, as the traffic is chaotic, the drivers do what they want, not do what they should and it’s not like the roads had any white or yellow lines drawn for drivers’ aid. But we got there and the parking lot existed and it was only 3 EUR per hour. So out we took our stroller and started moving towards the park. There were sidewalks even, for our pleasure, but no pedestrian crossings. Now, it’s fine to run when you feel lucky and you’re alone, but not with Emmi on board. Took us about 20 minutes to find a safe way to cross. And in the park we were. The park, it was beautiful… Well.. there were trees there. But a bit old. Well.. out of about 4 different children’s attractions (swings, slides), we found one from where we let Emmi slide down, the rest did not feel safe, the one didn’t feel 100% safe either, but what are you going to do. Still, saw some birds and a squirrel, it was okay for a day out.
To make things even better. No trip with Me and Saskia, usually goes by without visiting a McDonald’s if it’s close by. And there was one. We had another adventure getting there, running across roads and carrying the stroller, because getting on and off the sidewalks was only for healthy people. After we got there, found out that we had forgotten our masks in our car and left hungry.
Then. On another day, when Reet was feeling better, we wanted to go to another park. Found it to be 30 minutes in the opposite direction from the previous park, by car. So, even more exotic than the park close by. Drove there, made a few rounds around the park’s block then entered from one road. They said that this isn’t the correct place. Then tried another place, who didn’t understand our wish either. The park had been closed for years already – replaced by a government building. So, we went back to the park we knew at least existed. This time we parked inside the park, for free, like normal people. And we saw about 10 squirrels who were very interested in us. So, that was quite fun, these were the first pics from costa rica, we had made.
These two adventures to the same park and that one day shopping, while seemingly totally irrelevant and probably make you think: “Why would you even write about it, Dario, why?”, are an awesome introduction to
Costa Rica in general:
It’s not pedestrian friendly. Usually no sidewalks (not even kidding, we saw sidewalks only in the very centre of villages) and if you find sidewalks, don’t expect a pedestrian crossing anywhere. So, if something feels close and walkable, it’s really-really-really not.
It’s not driver friendly. Neither other drivers nor the roads will make your life easy. And not just them. The locals move around without reflectors on the road (because there’s no sides to the road, not even dirt, just woods) It’s most probably going to be a bumpy slow frustrating ride full of surprises.
You’re most likely going to pay for parking if you don’t know any better
You’ll see lots of birds and animals, you might just need to go back another day (or wait and watch) to see more of them.
Don’t fully trust google maps, odds are that it doesn’t exist anymore.
Everything you find in stores, is going to be more expensive than what you’re used to.
About what else to do in San Jose:
Nothing inside the city that I know about (museums maybe?)
Drive 1,5h one way to see either of the two volcanos that are close by. From what I read, they will give You similar experiences:
You go early, because in the afternoon there will be clouds
You will just leave your car and walk for like 15 minutes
enjoy the views for ~20 minutes (one doesn’t allow you to stay for longer)
Drive back for 1,5 hours.
An Airbnb host actually told us about a location, again 1,5 hours from San Jose, that’s supposed to have awesome views, but we never reached that place.
Probably there’s lots to do when you like nightlife etc, but we don’t, we like views - nature.
Before moving on, let’s talk about jetlag
When in Europe, Emmi’s schedule was more or less like this: Go to sleep at 9pm and wake up at ~8am. Our schedule was almost the same, only we went to sleep at 12am.
Now, Costa Rica is minus 8 hours and we were most afraid of what’s going to happen with Emmi. For us it’s easy… force yourself to stay up a bit longer, and sleep longer and after a few days you’re golden, but with Emmi, you never know.
So, for the first two or so days, she woke up at 4:30. We had done well, and we didn’t have to do much, she couldn’t go to sleep earlier than ~9 on the first day, because of the travel, thus needed rest for longer (did wake up a few times during the night, but fell back asleep quickly). Anyway, the difference was only 4 hours. We were afraid of her waking up at 2 or even earlier.
After that, during our Costa Rica trip, we basically woke up at 5:30-6:00 and she went to sleep at about ~18:00.
And we never tried to change this schedule (force her to be up longer, thus moving the wake-up time back), because this was ideal for us. We’d wake up with the sun (which is limited here, the sun went down at 17:30 already), so we had more daytime because of waking up so early.
So, Emmi went to sleep at 18:00 and the rest of us all had our tv time until 21:00-22:00, depending on whether we fell asleep behind the tv or not.
This, of course, meant sacrificing night life for us. We had no intentions of Taking Emmi to Bars with us later at night, forcing here to stay up. Oh no, no nightlife. What am I going to do (at home I don’t have a special relationship with nightlife either, because I have a little girl at home).
With Saskia it’s a little bit different. Not because of jet lag, but because… When it’s 11pm+ people start waking up in Estonia, so, she’d secretly stay up late at night and usually sleeps until 9-10 unless we forced her up.
Anyway, Reet was now better and San Jose was nothing more than a frustration, we were happy to leave this city behind for Manuel Antonio.
