alka12: I also stayed at the Holiday Inn about 4 years ago and agree with student's comments.

If you're looking for something closer to the airport, for just a night, the Hampton Inn's not a bad choice. It's only about 5 minutes away from the airport.

Intercontinental is in a very nice suburb, Escazu, about a 20 minute ride from the airport. A bit isolated, but nicer than downtown San Jose, which is nothing worth writing home about. You'll have nice surroundings at the InterContinental but won't get too much of a flavor of being in Costa Rica.

mauigirl and topshelff: Allow some time for adjusting to the altitude. Cuzco is way up there. A friend of mine tried to do Lima-Cuzco-Macchu Picchu-Lima on a weekend during a business trip and was sick in bed all weekend because he couldn't adjust to the altitude.


FoolishRunner: No way. Personally, I wouldn't allow less than 4 hours for connections, but that's just my conservative nature. But 1 hour? Lots of airlines require you to have checked in an hour before the flight. I would guess you'll have to clear customs in MIA to get through to the ACES ticket counter. (I could be wrong there...) Even though ACES and Taca are in adjoining terminals, I wouldn't risk it.

BTW there's a nice map of MIA at http://www.miami-airport.com