Sat, 2/5/11 - We got up very early Saturday morning to catch our 7:40 AM flight. We all had a really nice time and all want to go back again. We have many memories we will cherish for a lifetime.
What we liked about Costa Rica was...
1. Beautiful scenery
2. Lots of wild life
3. The weather was much more moderate than we expected. For the most part not too hot and not too muggy and not much rain. Going January-May and avoiding the rainy months around October is important.
4. Active volcanoes... though not so active when we were there. :(
5. Super friendly and helpful people
6. Clean food and water. Except for a couple of places on the Caribbean coast, you can eat the food and drink the water without worry. None of the four of us had any problems over a two week period.
7. Clean bathrooms... at restaurants, gas stations, & tourist spots... cleaner than in the USA, no kidding.
8. No visa required, just pick up and go.
9. They drive on the right hand side of the road
10. The drivers are sane... slow, but sane
11 We didn't see graffiti (though we didn't enter San Jose, the capitol) and the roads were mostly litter free
12. Inexpensive food... meals for four with drinks, tax, tip about $50
13. Delicious food... "Best steak ever" at the Sabor in Monteverde
14. Inexpensive lodging... maybe a fifth to half what you would pay in the states for equivalent accommodations
15. You can get dollars (yes, US greenbacks!) from some ATMs and spend dollars anywhere, and the conversion rate was a handy 500 to 1 so a $20 bill is the same as a 10,000 colone note and is accepted just about everywhere.
16. They speak Spanish (and a little English)... yes, Spanish is not English but at least some of us took it in high school, and between Spanish and English we got along fine.
17. Virtually no mosquitoes. We had been led to believe that we would be eaten alive the second we stepped out of the airport but other than walking through the meadow in the late afternoon, they really were not an issue.
Okay, there are a few things not so great...
1. They don't believe in street signs so its easy to get lost. A GPS or friendly native will set you straight though.
2. The main roads are good but the back roads can be very bad. You need a 4x4.
3. We heard, but did not experience, that your car may be broken into if you leave it unguarded full of luggage/goodies in plain sight in a parking lot. This was not a problem for us since most restaurants have an open, no walls design so we could keep an eye on the car.
4. We also heard that if you go at the wrong time of year (Octoberish) and/or the wrong part of the country (Caribbean side) you can run into bad weather, mosquitoes and weird tropical diseases. We didn't run into any of these problems ourselves.
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