Travel guide
Do you need a rental car?
Sometimes yes — and we’ll tell you so. On this particular route, usually not, and here’s the honest reasoning.
When a rental car is genuinely the right call
Starting here, because a guide that only argues its own side isn’t a guide. Rent a car if your trip is built around moving on your own schedule: hopping between Guanacaste or Nicoya beaches, staying two weeks or more, heading somewhere genuinely remote, or simply being the kind of traveler for whom the drive is part of the trip. It’s also the better economics on long, slow trips — the ones where a private transfer would be paying a driver to wait around for a week.
Ask what goes wrong on Costa Rica trips and the answer isn’t the guides and isn’t the rain. It’s the driving, every time, and it’s always a number nobody handed over in advance. So we hand it over first: every drive on your route, in writing, before you pay. On this one there are only two worth the name — and one of them isn’t a drive at all.
If you do rent
Ten things worth knowing before you book
Never leave anything visible in a parked car — not for five minutes, not at a trailhead
Don’t drive mountain roads after dark
Trust the main road over the app’s shortcut
Consider four-wheel drive in green season, or for lodging at the end of a rural track
Get the all-in daily rate, mandatory insurance included, in writing before you book
The mandatory liability policy is required by law here and cannot be declined
Credit-card coverage generally does not replace that particular policy
Picking the car up in one town and dropping it in another usually costs nothing extra
In the cloud forest you collect the car at the counter, not at your door
Minimum age is 21, and a deposit is held on a credit card
The surprise
The daily rate you see is rarely the daily rate you pay
Costa Rica requires every rental to carry a mandatory liability policy, and many of the very cheap rates on international comparison sites don’t include it. It gets added at the counter, in person, after you’ve landed and after you’ve mentally committed to the price. Ask for the total daily rate including the mandatory insurance, in writing, and compare those figures rather than the advertised ones. A company that won’t give you that number is telling you exactly what the counter conversation is going to be like.
Breakfast at the foot of a volcano, lunch inside a cloud, and in between you watch the country change from the middle of a lake. It’s the only leg of this trip that ends up in the photo album.
Weather is the one thing nobody here controls, so we wrote down in advance what happens when it wins. There’s a land route, you still sleep in the cloud forest that night, and you are not the one making phone calls about it. That’s if you let us drive. You don’t have to.
Three ways to travel it
And what each one costs you
All transfers
You never drive, and the leg from the volcano to the cloud forest crosses Lake Arenal by boat: the one transfer of the trip people photograph instead of endure. This is what the trip includes.
All car
Collect it at the volcano and leave it at the airport at the end, in a different city, which in most cases costs nothing extra. What it costs you is the lake: a car can’t take the boat.
The mixed version
Transfers and the boat for the first half, then a car from the cloud forest down to the coast. You keep the best hour of the route and get the freedom where it actually counts.
The honest part
Unlit, unshouldered, and the drop is right there
Mountain roads here are narrower than you expect, and after dark they are unlit and unshouldered, with the drop often a few feet from your wheels. That is not a reason to skip the rental — plenty of people drive this country happily and have a wonderful time. It is the reason to build every day so you arrive in daylight, and to treat the last run to the airport as the one leg you really don’t want to do in the dark.
Breakfast at the foot of a volcano, lunch inside a cloud, and in between you watch the country change from the middle of a lake. It’s the only leg of this trip that ends up in the photo album.
Weather is the one thing nobody here controls, so we wrote down in advance what happens when it wins. There’s a land route, you still sleep in the cloud forest that night, and you are not the one making phone calls about it. That’s if you let us drive. You don’t have to.
What driving here is actually like
Navigation apps here will cheerfully route you onto a shortcut that becomes a rutted farm track, and the confident move is to ignore it and stay on the main road. That isn’t a reason not to rent either — it’s a reason to keep the phone on the main road and your own eyes on the signs.
Both kinds are included, and which one you want depends on how many of you there are. A shuttle sells seats; a van sells the whole vehicle. So the bigger your group, the sooner the private one stops costing more — and it tips at a different number on every leg, which is why nobody should sell you one rule for the whole trip. The airport guide does that arithmetic in full.
For scale: bought on their own, the four transfers that carry you in from the airport, across the lake, down to the coast and back start at about $238 a person. On our trips they’re not a line you settle separately — they’re inside the price, along with your stay, your guides and every activity. There are three things we can’t do for you, though, and you should hear them now rather than later.
And if the answer is a car, we’ll get you one
This guide argues against a rental on this particular route and we’re not going to soften that. But the answer changes with the trip, and plenty of trips aren’t this one. If that’s you, we can arrange the car too, on the terms we’d want ourselves: the all-in daily rate with the mandatory insurance included, in writing, before you commit to anything. Same honest answer either way — we just save you the desk.
There is a small domestic flight that turns that three-hour drive into half an hour. It isn’t ours to sell, so if you want it, raise it early and we’ll go and find out for you.
And if your flight home leaves before early afternoon, the run back to the airport starts in the dark. We’ll say so while you can still change the flight, which is the only time that information is worth anything. Everything else is already written down. Here is where.
Before you ask
The five we get every week
Yes. Collect it at the volcano and leave it at the airport at the end, in a different city, which in most cases costs nothing extra. What it costs you is the lake: a car can’t take the boat, so you drive the long road around instead.
Not for the main roads on this route. It’s worth considering in green season, or if your lodging sits at the end of a rural track — which is why it pays to ask what the last kilometer is actually like.
Costa Rica requires every rental to carry a mandatory liability policy, and many of the cheap rates on comparison sites don’t include it. It gets added at the counter, after you’ve landed. Ask for the all-in daily rate with the mandatory insurance included, in writing, before you book.
The coverage you may be counting on generally does not replace this particular policy, whatever the benefits guide implies. Worth checking before you rely on it.
Yes, on the terms we’d want ourselves: the all-in daily rate with the mandatory insurance included, in writing, before you commit. One practical note — in the cloud forest you collect the car at the counter, not at your door.
Keep reading
The rest of the getting-around question
Start here
Getting around Costa Rica
The three ways to travel this route — and what each one costs you.
Travel Guide
The drives, in writing
Every transfer on the route with honest times, and how to check any drive time yourself.
Travel Guide
Getting to La Fortuna from SJO
Four ways in from the airport, and the group size where the answer flips.
Not sure which way to go?
Tell Marco what kind of trip you have in mind. If a rental car is the better tool for it, he’ll say so on the call — and then he’ll sort it out for you.
Worth timing: December through April is when this route fills, and flights get booked long before anyone thinks about the driving. If those are your dates, this conversation is worth having now rather than after the tickets stop being refundable.