A Country Rediscovered

When it comes to planning vacations, I have always believed that there are two types of people. Type 1 visits a vacation destination at some point in time and falls in love with it. It is at that point that they say to themselves, “This is great, let’s come back here every chance we get”. Type 2 (ahem, that being us) visits a location and falls in love with it, but instead says, “This is great, we sure are glad we came here, but let’s still try some place new for our next trip”.

Now of course I understand the convenience of going back to the same places for yearly vacations. People have time shares, own vacation homes, and overall it can be cost effective as well as easier for large families to organize. I also honestly think people in general like what they know because it is comfortable and safe. Even though I classify Dustin and me as type 2, we do go back to places more than once and who knows maybe one day we will even want to own a vacation home of our own. However, for now we feel that the world is a big place and there is always an opportunity to try a new destination and see new sites.

That being said our trip this March to attend our friend’s wedding had us returning to a country we had already spent time in on our RTW trip. The country was Costa Rica so how could one not be excited about a return trip there. When we previously blogged about Costa Rica, one of our biggest complaints was the cost. After spending time in Central America we could not believe the sticker shock. However, as it goes, where there is increased American tourism, there is increased price. Thankfully one of the advantages on our side for this trip was that we were NOT on our RTW, so therefore we had no strict daily budget. We also did our research and realized that even though Costa Rica is not a large country, there was still lots for us to see that we had previously missed. After a great few days at an all-inclusive resort for the beautiful wedding, our Costa Rican adventure ensued…

Renting a Car in Costa Rica:

Car rental in Costa Rica is easy and straight forward, but Dustin was plenty apprehensive so he thought he would share the few tips he learned in hopes to save some others time:

They will try to con you into buying all sorts of insurance but only TPL, SLI, SLC or API is required as long as you can prove you have credit card insurance for the other coverage (CDW or LDW)

More on auto insurance – http://costa-rica-guide.com/CarRentalInsurance.html

Credit card insurance – https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/card-benefits/car-rental-insurance.html

People should not be fooled into thinking their car rental is $10 a day as it first appears as they will be surprised to find out it’s closer to $25 a day and that’s getting the cheapest thing you can find.

In general the internet reviews tend to favor renting through National or Avis, but recommend staying away from Dollar or Thrifty.