CONSEJOS para CONDUCIR en COSTA RICA 🇨🇷

Hello, my name is John. And in this video I am going to give you a few tips if you are planning to rent a car in Costa Rica. A few days ago I returned from a trip to Costa Rica, which is an incredible country, one of my favorites so far and during these 15 days. We were in the country, we rented a car and we visited a large part of what it can offer in the time we had. So I think it is important that you keep some things in mind and you also plan to rent any type of vehicle for your trip. So be the best possible. One of the main things to comment on is when reserving a car. Type of car to rent. With which company to do it. What type of insurance to take are quite common questions, for example. What type of vehicle to book for a car? A trip through Costa Rica is enough with a car with a normal car, a 4x4 or a mega all-terrain vehicle is necessary, which is necessary. It is probably probably when you contact companies or if you go there and you are going to rent a car, it is highly recommended that you rent it. a 4x4 because there are many roads that are not in very good condition, etc. But in the end it is only to earn more money because 4x4s are much more expensive. The question is, is it really necessary to rent a 4x4 to go around Costa Rica? The answer is no. Although with nuances it depends on where you go the vast majority of the country Not if you are going to visit all the tourist sites such as San José Tortuguero Puerto Viejo the sand to Monte Verde everything that is the Pacific coast all these places you can do it with a normal car it is better a bigger one Yes, what I recommend is that it is neither the most basic car nor the most basic utility vehicle nor is it the heaviest 4x4. In our case, we took a type of minivan type car but it was not a 4x4 but it was higher So the undersides are not there, they are not so low and then in areas that are not as well paved there is not so much danger of the undersides rubbing against stones or potholes but rather there may be a little more resistance there but not really. We didn't see the need for a 4x4, especially because, for example, if you go to Monte Verde, which I think is one of the worst roads, especially if you come from the North, there is one at the end of the climb, about an hour long, which is 28 km or so. at an average of 28 kilometers per hour it is quite bad it had a lot of potholes the road is constantly quite broken if you go with 4x4 you can allow it and you want to go without problems and so on obviously much better you go with the 4x4 you have obviously launched that but well yes You want to adjust the budget a little in this part and you are hesitating and that is why it is not necessary that you rent a 4x4, no matter how much the rental companies tell you that yes, yes, well, no, it is not necessary which company to choose. This is complicated because I Normally, when on a trip I find a company that I like with which I have had good treatment, everything has gone well and I recommend it to you. Even if it is not the best because I have not tried it, at least you have positive feedback but we rent with europcar and the experience was not at all pleasant but here the Costa Rica script tells you, there are very few airports But they all have along a nearby street that can take you with satellites There are a lot of companies, they are all the typical multinationals Avis europcar bajet all of these are out there and then there are some that are more national more local so take a look Because for example We have rented with eurocar And the truth is that we do not recommend it at the time, when I looked at it it had a good price and it did not have very bad opinions so I said Well, choosing that it is a multinational company, I want to think that they will have some type of quality standard to maintain on the sites and without it having been a [ __ ] disaster. In other words, it has not been the most serious thing in the world, it is true that there are many things that you hear is the brake and that's how they gave it to us, it wasn't right at the beginning but the next day it was already there And obviously we didn't do anything with the car, that is, they already gave us the car with that car breakdown It's true that It's new, it's from 2020 and but the problem is that the brake makes a brutal noise from the first day of course and on top of that they put stress on you because you don't know if the car is going to be completely screwed up or what's wrong with it and you think it's going to go away It's going to screw up the whole trip, it's going to leave you stranded there, so you want to be angry, that makes you feel that point of concern that you shouldn't have when you rent a car, that type is not a 4x4, but volume, that is, and apart from that, not only that. For example, the clean ones don't have soap, they don't have water, so there's a lot of it, we 're in the dry season. There are days when it hasn't rained, it constantly fills up with dirt because there are areas that are unpaved, it comes from arsen, etc., so it gets the windshield dirty and You can't clean it. So we've had to get to the point of adding drinking water from the little we have to be able to have some vision on the road and for example if you go to Corcovado, access is viable in the dry season because there are bridges on the rivers and So if you have a 4x4 you can do it Well we couldn't have done it because we simply didn't have soap and there the cars that arrive reach the top of [ __ ] so it would have been sent you would have had to be there every 10 minutes Cleaning the windshield horrible So my recommendation is that Review different rental companies a lot, opinions that people have And if you find companies that are national, they are more local, small because apart from the fact that you are going to help a family and there is no multinational, surely if anything happens, they will put a lot of More facilities, an important point also when driving through Costa Rica are the parks, as I have mentioned in, for example, with hunched over at all points when you go to visit waterfalls, towns such and such. Well, in Costa Rica it is a very safe country around having problems leaving the car in the parks we leave the car in various parks for example in Tortuguero in Corcovado in the area of ​​Monteverde in Puerto Viejo in all places we leave the car for example Time in hot springs in the area of ​​the Arenal volcano the waterfall fortune etc. In a thousand places and we never had any problems and in fact they always give a great feeling of security they are always guarded parks they charge you 2000 3000 colones which can be about 5 euros or whatever and it is worth it especially if they charge you That's because you have to leave the car overnight and then have problems and when you leave it in a harbour, the same if there are more cars. Well, always try to leave it parked nearby and above all because what is the trunk part sometimes they tend to give the car with the trunk exposed, that is, without a tray. So if you have a blanket, whatever is better, and if you are going to take out your backpacks, it is better that they are always covered or similar so as not to leave things visible. It is also important that you drive patiently because There are not many highways in Costa Rica and some near San José, but they are also in sections, but what you will normally find are fairly flat and flat roads, that is, for example, along the coasts there are main roads that go from north to south. and they are very very flat roads, they do not have many curves. The problem is that they usually have two lanes, each one in one direction, and they tend to be slow because of the traffic there is, there is usually a lot of traffic at practically any time of the day, especially due to trucks. that transport loads crossing all of Central America that go to Panama Nicaragua etc. so it is very normal that you find the roads congested. So it is important that you always travel with time margin and with patience but above all with time margin if you are going to use applications like Google Maps or Waze are very good because they constantly update the traffic status and they calculate it quite well, but then the state of the road or if it is raining, potholes, etc. It is not going to calculate it for you anyway. So it is very likely. Maybe you calculate it will give you three hours to get from Point to Point b and it is not unusual for you to end up taking three hours 40 or similar. So if you then have tours or whatever, it is important that you go with this time margin and then take into account Also, there is a lot of construction, we saw construction on almost all the roads, both in the Caribbean and the Pacific, many roads in construction, there are many areas with detours, so especially at night you have to be careful because if you go very fast and It can be dangerous for car insurance. Normally, insurance is usually taken from the vehicle rental company itself, which depends on whether you take it, what is mandatory, whether it is third parties or expanding to all risk. There are companies that insure your car without be linked to this rental company and they are usually much cheaper. For this trip, I booked with a company called Rental covers, which is what they are dedicated to. It is simply that of selling you insurance that covers the car or anything that may be comprehensive. pass they cover it for you that means that later when you rent your car through the rental company you take it with the basic insurance and if anything happens to it and they are going to charge you because there is a line there is I don't know what and they charge you You pass this on to the company with which you have contracted the insurance separately and they return it to you, they take care of it, but the economic difference is brutal, so these are not the tips I wanted to give you if you are going to rent a vehicle in Costa Rica, I really encourage you to do it because it will give you a lot of flexibility when planning or moving around. It gives you a lot of freedom and the truth is that it is very worth it. Although it may increase the cost of the trip if you can afford it and whatever. question, comment and so on, you can leave it in the comments of the video or you can contact me on Instagram as always and I will be happy to answer you. So don't worry, enjoy Costa Rica, it is an incredible country and see you next time Pura vida