Costa Rica

We're flying into SJO and staying between Quepos and Manuel Antonio National Park. Both of those activities aren't far. Lots of charter fishing out of Marina Pez Vela in Quepos.

Jaco VIP is your ticket to paradise

Just did this a couple of weeks ago.

Flew into San Jose. Drove 3.5 hours to La Fortuna/Arenal and spent a few days white water rafting class III-IVs, hiking a volcano, swimming in the natural hot springs, etc...

Then mid week drove 3.5 hours to Tamarindo and spent the remainder of the week surfing every morning and just beach bumming it every day. Then flew back home from Liberia.

We didn't fish, but there are fishing excursions you can plan in that general area of Tamarindo and up along that coast.

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Drove 3.5 hours

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Did you rent a vehicle or have someone else shuttle you?

If you rented, how are the roads/navigation/etc?

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Did you rent a vehicle or have someone else shuttle you? If you rented, how are the roads/navigation/etc?

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We rented a vehicle. Was $530 total for 9 nights. It was four of us. The vehicle was a small suv that fit 5 people plus bags. It wasn't anything nice, but it got us to where we needed to go.

I did look at getting a private driver to/from airports (not a shuttle which might even be cheaper). For four people, a driver from San Jose airport to La Fortuna/Arenal was $150. La Fortuna to Tamarindo was $250. Then we would have had to get a shuttle from Tamarindo to Liberia airport which I didn't price. So it may have been a little cheaper to go the private driver route, but this way we had a vehicle at all times in case we needed it. We ended up not needing it at all in La Fortuna, but we used the car every day in Tamarindo because we stayed about a 10 minute walk to the beach and it was a pain to carry surf board & coolers. So we piled everything in the vehicle every day and drove. A vehicle probably isn't worth it if you're staying directly on the beach though.

Roads from San Jose to Arenal/la Fortuna aren't bad at all, they are just extremely curvy and they have very little shoulder. The initial 30 minutes are so is a straight drive, but once you get off of that it is nothing but curves. Roads are good though, just have to drive slow.

First half of La fortuna to Tamarindo is just as curvy as coming in to La Fortuna, but with some fairly large pot holes to avoid. But the drive is absolutely beautiful because you're up on a cliff driving around Lake Arenal, so the view is legit for the first hour or two. We even stopped a few times to take pics because of the scenery. Then the final 1.5 hours of that drive is a couple of straight highways that are paved well, so you can book it the rest of the way into tamarindo.

Navigation: We used google maps on our phone to navigate and it worked flawlessly.

The roads around Costa have names, but good luck finding them. You'll just be driving down the road and you'll come across one sign saying "Arenal Volcano Next Right" or something similar and that's it. So printing out map quest directions beforehand (which I also did just in case) wasn't very helpful because the streets weren't named well. You just have to be on the lookout for signs like that instead of street names.

I think I paid $115 per day for a driver with a van. Its nice not having to worry about anything