carlosr

any suggestions for car rental company in Costa Rica. My family of four will be traveling this April for 10 days. I want to rent an SUV. Never done this in Costa Rica before. There seems to be so many different options. also, not sure how to budget for insurance. Any help would be appreciated.

wolfie_cr

1) get the gps
2) I would stick to a known /major company
3) I would get the full insurance because I am a local and I read about what happens to tourists all the time
4) Make sure you dont leave your valuables (passports/laptops/cameras etc ) in plain sight

Efrem

If you won't be driving around a lot, look into the shuttle van companies that provide door-to-door service between all the major cities and towns. Granted, there are some economies of scale in renting a car for four people, but if the cost difference isn't huge I'd try to avoid it.

cem21

I can't emphasize this more strongly--do NOT rent a car. Costa Rica has the most expensive traffic fines in the Americas (maybe the world) and they love to levy these fines at tourists in an arbitrary manner. We,re talking $600 tickets here.

I just got back from there with my husband and two small children. We got lost on the way from the airport to our hotel. We were panicking, our kids had gotten carsick and we tried to turn around. I' m not sure what traffic law we broke, but a police officer pulled us over, yelled at us in rapid- fire Spanish ( it was obvious he had no intention of helping us understand what he was saying, all I caught was a lot of contemptuous dropping of "Americano"). He then flung a $600 ticket in our window, and sped off without giving us directions.

After that, we were too shaken up to venture out much and really didn't enjoy ouselves. So spare yourself the risk of going through what we went through and skip the car rental.

wolfie_cr

hate to tell you its not just the tourists against which they are levied

would love to know the details, I dont supose you could send me a scanned version of the ticket?

cem21

From what I can make of the awful handwriting on the ticket, something about a left turn. Dunno--explaining what we did wrong in order to make sure it didn't happen again was obviously not important to this policeman. We met so many other people on the trip who were also given these ridiculous tickets for questionable reasons (ie, going 100 km/hr when they most definitely weren't). They all vowed never to come back either. What stupid public policy--enforce laws in a way that won't measurably improve public safety (these tickets aren't going to change the horrible signage, poorly-designed roads, and dangerous conditions for pedestrians throughout the country) and will chase away a good chunk of tourism dollars. Just seems really short-sighted to me.

CRGT

First of all, Get a Quote with mandatory protection( CDW+Liability)and taxes. This way you would have an idea of what you will be paying-if you want to full cover yourself it would means insuring your security deposit related to your car rental. Some companies may even have a few options for this.