Previous Trip Notes
A Friendly Trip to Costa Rica: Part 2 – MIA Centurion Lounge & MIA > SJO
A Friendly Trip to Costa Rica: Part 1 – AA DCA > MIA
Preface: A rental car post is typically not something I would write about, but given the complexities of Costa Rica, I thought it could be useful for other future travelers.
At the National Car Rental counter in the airport, they slapped a sticker on me and took us to their shuttle. A short five-minute ride to get us to the rental car agency. I was ready for this – having spent a considerable amount of time in advance researching and securing a rental car. The rental car industry in Costa Rica seems like quite the racket. Unquoted insurance. Mandatory country insurance. Changes in rates from secured ones online. I had read dozens of reviews about this, so I knew all the tips, and laws, to ensure our online quote was accurate. Having an AMEX Platinum card gives me Emerald Elite status (which is actually quite awesome in the U.S.). This allows up to nine authorized users for free. After booking online, I called National to confirm that the additional drivers would be added and were included in the rate – they confirmed that was true. The rental agency in San Jose? Not so much. In addition to a higher rate than they initially told me they were going to charge, they wanted $5/day per extra driver. Nope. I questioned both the rate and the additional driver fee. This then began to get painful, but they wanted almost $200 more than what I was quoted online and which I called to confirm the details a week earlier.
Information I learned while researching rental cars in Costa Rica: there is mandatory third party insurance that the country mandates. It ranges from $13-$22/day. This is not optional, regardless of credit card or other coverage. The CDW, however, can be covered by credit card coverage, but you often need to provide proof of coverage by bringing documentation. Despite bringing this, National Rental Car made me call American Express so that they could talk to them and verify my coverage. GPS Devices are also about $15-$20/day, or you can download programs such as MAPS.ME or OsmAnd which are free offline navigation apps – they worked great for us (just make sure to download the country map before you go into airplane mode).
Ultimately they wound up charging $20 more than what I was quoted, but also cost us 45 minutes of our lives that we would never get back. To add insult to injury, the conversion rate they charged was egregious…far worse than the airport – WHICH IS UNHEARD OF. Oh well, a fight for another day.
We loaded up our Toyota Prado SUV and took off towards Zarcero. We had purchased a $7 sim card at the airport for emergencies, and with the offline map apps, should have been set….except for the fact that the hotel we were staying at, El Silencio Lodge, located just outside Bajos del Toro, was not on any map. Their instructions were to head to Zarcero and then follow signs. The traffic outside of San Jose was terrible. We plodded along for what seemed forever, and then finally broke from the congestion. We thought we knew where we were going, but at one point got nervous enough to jump off the road and ask for directions at a gas station. I took seven years of Spanish. I’m fairly conversant…or so I think. But this was tough. First, it felt like they were robbing me on the Imperial Beer I bought (later confirmed). Second, they claimed they didn’t know where Zarcero, a grocery store, or Bajos del Toro were at. Ouch. Luckily a policeman pulled into the gas station and he was kind enough to let us follow him for about ten minutes until we got to the road we needed to venture forward on. We saw a small bodega and stopped to purchase dinner to make that night. Most of the ingredients were there. As we continued onward, we drove through Naranjo, which was quite the bustling hub with what seemed to be dozens of actual grocery stores. So we stopped again to buy the final ingredients. There were two reasons we decided to cook: first, we couldn’t find prices on food or excursions anywhere for El Silencio Lodge. Given the room rates, I was expecting roughly $100 per person for a meal. Buying food would save a couple hundred dollars at least, or so I thought. Second, NSPwife and I love to cook, and simply don’t have a ton of time to do so at home, so we take advantage whenever we can.
After Naranjo, we started twisting and turning on the roads as we ventured upward. It became quite treacherous. Living in Colorado for four years, I’m used to hairpin turns and steep grades. These proved to provide both, along with narrow roads and two-way traffic at times that could barely fit on the road together. During the home-stretch, as we entered the cloud forest eco-system, the clouds rolled in over the mountains and seemed to kiss the ground. Rain droplets were hitting the windshield, and everyone other than me (who was in control of the car) were bracing for certain death. But alas, we found the entry gate and pulled in.
The cloud-forest was amazing. After 12 months of planning and prep work, we were finally here. Time for relaxation to begin.
Comment
I like this post, and agree that Car Renting in Costa Rica can vary by 500%. We lucked out, by purchasing our Rental through Dollar VIA the Chase UR Portal. I think this helped a bit because (perhaps) they value the relationship with Chase (they ONLY had options for two different companies at the time) – and Fortunately we didn’t have any issues with proving extraneous insurance.
However, we got a new car (Nissan Tilda) – that didn’t have license plates. I asked about this and they said ‘Eh, they take 30 days to ship those in CR, so some cars don’t have them.’ Driving in the US sans plate = immediate cop chum. But in Costa Rica, we drove around for 6 days with no problem.
Better yet, I expected to get screwed returning our dirty car… They didn’t care that it was muddy, and we didn’t get charged anything extra.
FYI we used a Garmin GPS and downloaded some Costa Rica maps from some random website – risky, but it worked.
We joked all week about their ‘Trust Bridges’ – 1 lane bridges with no lights that you must navigate with other drivers in small towns. I was also surprised to see entire families just walking down busy roads, like 2 feet from the cars, with babies and kids in tow….
Overall Driving in Costa Rica was fun, but navigating place to place was a pain because they don’t believe in addresses.