Road conditions, rivers, GPS, night driving and the real cost of a rental car - an honest look before you book one.
Plenty of people hire a car in Costa Rica and have a wonderful time. Plenty of others spend the first three days white-knuckled. The difference is usually knowing what you are getting into.
The main highways are paved, well signed and perfectly straightforward. The trouble starts on the last stretch - the road to the beach, the road to the waterfall, the road to your hotel. These can be gravel, steeply potholed, or in the green season part-flooded, and they are rarely as short as the map suggests.
For the main routes between towns, you do not need one. For rural roads, river crossings and some hotel driveways in the hills, you genuinely do. If your accommodation warns you to bring a 4x4, believe them - a two-wheel drive on the wrong road is how holidays get expensive.
Navigation apps in Costa Rica are famously willing to route you down a track that is technically a road and practically a riverbed. Cross-check anything that looks like a shortcut, and be suspicious of any route that saves you twenty minutes.
This is the one piece of advice every local gives and every guidebook repeats, because it is right. Rural roads are unlit, often unmarked, and shared with pedestrians, cyclists, dogs and the occasional horse. It gets dark early - around six all year - and the risk goes up sharply after that.
The headline price is rarely the price. Mandatory local liability insurance is added at the counter and often doubles a cheap quote. Then there is fuel, tolls, parking, and the deposit hold on your card. Once you have added it up, a rental for a short trip is frequently no cheaper than being driven - and considerably more work.
From roughly May to November, water changes the map. Fords that are ankle-deep in March can be impassable in October, and they rise fast. The local rule is simple and worth adopting: if you cannot see the bottom, do not drive into it. No rental insurance in the country covers water damage from a river crossing.
Carry your passport or a copy and your licence - checkpoints are routine and entirely normal. Fuel is sold by attendants rather than self-service, and prices are fixed nationally, so there is nothing to shop around for. Fill up when you are near a station rather than when you need one; on the peninsula they are further apart than you would like.
Never leave anything visible in a parked car, anywhere, for any length of time. Break-ins at trailheads and beach car parks are the single most common crime against visitors, and they are entirely avoidable. Use guarded parking where it exists - it usually costs a couple of dollars and it is worth it.
If you are staying two weeks, moving between several regions, and enjoy driving, a car gives you freedom that is hard to replicate. If you are here for a week, based in one or two places, and would rather look at the country than at the road, transfers and a driver will cost about the same and save you the stress.
Flying to Guanacaste? Here's how Liberia (LIR) and San José (SJO) airports compare on drive time, flights and cost - and which to pick for Samara, Tamarindo and Nosara.
Dry season vs green season in Guanacaste - a month-by-month guide to weather, crowds and prices, so you can pick the right time to visit Samara and the Pacific coast.
