I did a lot of research via the web and friends who had traveled to Costa Rica. Some of our many questions:
What is the official currency used and the exchange rate?
Where was the best place to exchange our currency?
What was the best way to take money?
What did it cost for ATM usage and credit card usage?
Do they speak any English?
Are the locals (called Ticos) friendly?
Could I use our cell phones and if so what charges would we incur?
What kind of internet access will we have?
What clothing would we need?
Should we rent a car?
Where would we eat?
What would we eat?
Can we drink the water?
How safe is it in San Jose (the city) & outer areas of the country?
Do we need a visa or just a passport?
What diseases should we be concerned about?
And, finally, the most important question of all;
Where is the best and closest beach?
Please note that I will answer all of the above questions and more as I progress through this blog. Not all questions will be answered in this specific post. Also, remember, this was our personal experience and interaction with people we met. Which leads me to say that your experience could be different from ours. I am only trying to give you the best observations from our point of view. For your Costa Rican experience (whether it includes the dental or not), I hope that it will be equal to or better than ours! Pura Vida!
Currency
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The official currency is the Costa Rica colón (CRC) and at the time of our travel the exchange rate was about 500 colones (plural for colón) to $1 (U.S). That makes calculation fairly easy. Say that an item costs 1,000 colones, all you need to do is double that (2,000 colones) and drop the 3 zeros. That item just cost you $2 (U.S.) Also, don't get confused by the fact that is says mil on their bills, this is Spanish for thousand. The best place to exchange our currency was at the casinos. Before leaving we went to our local bank and exchanged our worn out bills for brand new, crisp 100's, 20's, 10's & a few $1's. If you have ever traveled outside of the U.S. this tends to be the best option if you are going to exchange cash. The reason is that other countries value the bills that are newer and in excellent condition and they give you a better exchange rate, and it is the most current currency, so they feel better about it not being counterfeit. Though they still check for that as well. The casino gave us a 500 to 1 exchange when the hotel only gave us a 486 to 1 and the bank was 490 to 1. We actually never did an exchange from the ATM with our debit card, so I am not sure what exchange rate that would have been. We also didn't choose to use our credit card to obtain cash because of the high fees associated with cash advances. If you don't wish to exchange any of your currency at all, they will take U.S. dollars and it seems that most places rounded to the 500-1 exchange, but some would be a bit lower rate, just be sure you don't care about the loss of a couple of dollars if you choose this route.
Keeping our money safe, we never took more than we thought we would need on any of our excursions. Certainly never more than $100 (in colones) at a time. We had a very secure hotel in San Jose and a large safe in the room and that is where the remainder of our money stayed. We could have used traveler's checks, but didn't want to have to go to the bank and wait in line, plus you have to have your passports with you as well. The less we had to risk losing the better. Cash was easy for us.
When we booked our hotel we had a choice of 2 options. We could pay in cash, U.S. dollars or colones, and there would not be any difference in the 500-1 rate of exchange. Or, we could pay with credit card and the cost would be higher. Here was our example: We had a rate of $73 per night if we paid cash, if we paid via credit card it would be $83 per night. Both of these prices included taxes and fees. We paid in U.S. dollars and that just saved us a trip to the casino, which was just around the block, so really not an inconvenience.
English or Spanish, Friendly or Not?
The local people, Ticos as they are called, are very friendly and willing to help if they can. Some of them speak a little English, while others can speak fluent English. Most of the drivers we had could speak English as they had either learned from the radio and television or they had actually lived in the U.S. We could speak a little Spanish and we learned more everyday, so we had no problems, and a little bit of sign language/hand gestures doesn't hurt either. The tourism literature is in English as well as Spanish. At both of the hotels we stayed at, English is spoken by the reception staff. So you always had someone to help translate, call a cab, make excursion reservations, etc. But, as always, if you are in a foreign country, learn their language! It makes communication so much easier and they appreciate your efforts of trying to speak their native tongue. Even if you don't speak fluently, at least you are trying and that goes a long way. Remember don't be an Ugly American, not all of the world speaks English.
Cell Phones and Internet
We have AT&T for our cell phones, I called them to find out what the fees would be if we used our phones in Costa Rica. AT&T charges based on the minutes you think you will use and you have to pay for voice minutes, then extra for text messages and additional charges for data usage, way more than I wanted to pay for no more than we would be using our phones. If we didn't want to purchase their package options we could always just use the phone and pay the ridiculously high fees associated with per minute usage. Needless to say, we didn't use our phones while we there, we didn't need to. We had excellent WiFi connection in both hotels, as well as Dr. Cavallini's office. Because of this we were able to use Skype to talk to family and friends and the connections to the U.S. were great. However, we did have issues connecting to family in Indonesia, not sure why. Before we left home I set up Google Voice accounts for both of our phones so that we could receive notice and listen to messages via email as well as texts (Bakty's phone # only, mine had issues with the text feature). Using Google voice we were able to send texts to cell phones in the U.S. If we had wanted to, we could use the phone at Dr. Cavallini's office to call for free to the U.S. or we could rent a cell phone from them for about $5 per day. We also had free phone calls to the U.S. at the Las Brisas Resort and Villas, when we stayed at the beach. One note regarding Google Voice, we had to search Google U.S. and bookmark it to enter the GV option. When you are in Costa Rica you get Google Costa Rica and it works a bit different for things that are U.S. accounts, so we had to be sure we were in Google U.S. to utilize the Google Voice Feature.
Renting a Car
We chose not to rent a car because of the unknown time period that we might use it. But, not only for that reason. During my research it seemed apparent that driving a rental car could be opening oneself up to theft. One of our friends friends had an incident where she had a flat tire and when she stopped to change it some men offered to help, despite the fact that she watched them closely, they still managed to make off with her camera. The flat tire may or may not have been their doing as well. The rental cars are marked, possibly in different ways, I don't know for sure. Some of the people that we met in CR did rent a car and they had round green stickers on their windshield. Their experience was that it was cheap to rent the car, but the insurance was expensive. It seems that the rates ran around $500 U.S. for 5 days, but you can check that for yourself as prices change from season to season. It seems that U.S. & Canadian insurance would not cover that part of the rental for these folks, so they paid the CR price for insurance. Here again, check with your insurance company and the car rental company before you go. For these people renting, they had a great experience driving and exploring the country of Costa Rica, stopping whenever they saw interesting sites or at the many fruit stands and souvenir places along their way. Some by way of accident got to see beautiful tropical rain forests because of wrong turns, others faithfully followed trucks hoping they would be led back to civilization from their dark, foggy, rainy, one lane mountain roads, (did I mention no guardrails and long drop offs down the cliff) and others just stopped to ask for directions in their best Spanish possible, "Donde" (Where is...)? Another note for car rentals in CR is that if you plan to go to bordering countries, Panama or Nicaragua, you have to stop at the border, cross on foot, rent your car for the next country. They do not allow rentals to cross any borders. Also, you will always have to have your passports with you at all times when driving the rental car, there are frequent police stops to check for identification. There are major highways which tend to be the best for traveling to and from unless you are adventurous. If you are going to be in San Jose only, you may not want to drive around town as it is very crazy and congested. Choose from taxis, buses or foot instead. See the next section below for more on that.
Overall, use common sense, all the people we met were very nice and helpful, but as anywhere you go there are always a few bad apples. If you need to stop be sure that it is a place that police or some type of security persons are present, they seem to be everywhere, and that it is very well lit if traveling at night. Don't stop out on the road just because someone is trying to flag you to pull over by flashing their lights or honking their horn. Continue to a safe spot, as referenced above, before pulling over.
For our next trip to CR, (Yes, there will be a next one definitely!) if we have the time, we will probably rent a car so that we can explore more things between San Jose and whatever beach we are headed to.
Taxi, Bus or Walk
Taxi drivers for the most part speak a lot or very little English. Only use the red taxis with the yellow upside down triangle on the door and an ID#. This way you know you won't be paying more than you should for the fare, at least for a gringo. (More on that in a later post). From my observation there is apparently some mystery about the way a fare is calculated even though it is metered, the price changes for the same transport by as much as $2 (U.S.) I watched the meter like a hawk and it stayed the same for about 8 blocks, then all of a sudden it started counting up the CRC quite rapidly. Speaking with fellow travelers they had the same experience, but if it only varied by $1 or $2 then, so be it, we got where we wanted and didn't have to walk in the rain. If you use taxis (called piratas or pirate taxis) and not the red ones with triangles then you will definitely pay a higher fare, so we were warned. Also, these taxis are usually not regulated or insured and they can sometimes be red. The taxi ID# normally has the same driver (so we were told by one of our drivers), so if you find one you like, you might look for him or make a request to see if he is available. They take either U.S. dollars or CRC.
Bus travel is used quite regularly by most Ticos in the city. It is the least expensive way to get around the city and its outer-lying areas. You must be careful that you speak enough Spanish to find out exactly where the bus will be taking you to, I can only imagine the nightmare of getting lost on a bus, probably something similar to the nightmare of going to school in your pajamas for those of you who may have had that dream. We didn't have a reason to use the bus while in San Jose, but a fellow traveler from Canada said that he regularly took one that went to Jaco (pronounced Hocko). He said his fare was only $5 U.S., not bad if you are traveling light with a backpack, but I had a nightmare before we went. This nightmare was way before we ever even decided to go to CR, but I remember it vividly. I was standing at a bus station with our suitcases when someone asked me a question. I turned to answer them and when I turned back around, the bus was pulling away and my luggage was gone! Laptop, passports, everything! I couldn't speak enough of the language to find someone to help so I was left to wander the street in a country where I didn't know the language. This was enough to deter me from wanting to do a long distance ride on a bus with more than just a backpack. In relaying my dream story to some of the people we met, they said it was actually a common occurrence, so keep your eyes and hands on your stuff at all times! Especially at bus stations. Here again, there are always bad apples wherever you go.
Walking. We did a lot of it. It was a good 15-20 minute walk to the dentist office from our hotel, depending on the pace. We walked it everyday except for one when it was raining really hard, which we were told was very unusual for this time of year. We walked to the park, we walked to the grocery store, we walked just to explore. It is great exercise for one, and it saved us money on taxis. It is safe to walk during the day, but do not go out walking at night unless you feel the need to be charitable to those who might want what you have. You get to see more of the local culture when you walk as it slows you down so that you can better observe your surroundings. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes if you plan on walking more than a few blocks. I was amazed to see the shoes that the local women wore, 6 inches heels for instance! I realize they work close by, but I know some of them had to walk a couple of blocks to get to the bus stop. I used to wear heels like that at work, but as soon as I got home it was bare feet all the way! Comfort over style for me! I did wear sandals a couple of times we walked to the dentist office, we walked at a slow enough pace that I didn't get blisters, except for the very first day and we were practically speed walking so I did have one blister to contend with. Also, be aware that even though there are sidewalks, they are in very poor condition in most places. Tree roots break them up and cause upheavals of the concrete, holes from work that had been done but never filled in, missing sidewalks altogether with just loose gravel in its place. I can't tell you the number of times that Bakty or I tripped over the same piece of concrete sticking up, and we knew it was there! Just be careful and watch your step and enjoy your walk.
Next post: More Questions Answered
