This post is the long answer to “How did you find Costa Rica?”. This is obviously very subjective and we also expect our perspective to shift over the course of our journey as we gather more experiences and adapt to a new normal. For example, while we may have found traffic noteworthy in one country, it might have ceased to be special to us when reaching the next one. With that in mind, let’s answer your question.

Our Route

We visited the country in February and stayed two ½ weeks in 5 different locations. We have seen only the pacific side and optimized our route for paragliding. We mainly went around by bus and didn’t visit any big city.

Our Impressions

We liked Costa Rica very much, especially the country/mountainside because of the cooler climate and it being less touristy.

Costa Rica sometimes gets compared to Switzerland. They have a similar size and were able to avoid all conflicts in neighboring countries, stayed neutral, or even helped with negotiations. It is a comparatively wealthy, expensive, and safe country. They have no own army and a good medical care system. Comparing the two countries sounds fair to us.

Tourism is a big part of its income, which is understandable thinking about the long stretches of the Caribbean and Pacific coast, their mountain range, and exotic wildlife. We also met lots of US citizens, not only tourists but also many who live in Costa Rica. The country is associated with the US a lot, they have a defense agreement and the US is Costa Ricas biggest trading partner. This closeness and proximity to the US were visible in many things, be it food, infrastructure, or cars.

Food

We have been to the pacific coast a lot and seafood was on many many menus. Furthermore, you’ll get a lot of meat, mostly chicken (pollo) and beef in form of minced meat or slices. In the less touristy places, it was nearly impossible to get something vegetarian. Sure, you could always fall back to rice and beans, but only if you explicitly ask for skipping the meat. It’s just the default for almost every dish.

In more touristy places you could get salad, pizza, and noodles at various Italian-style restaurants. And in even more fancy places you could enjoy Bowls, Sushi, and Asia-style fried dishes.

What we especially loved in Costa Rica were fruit drinks. They had all kinds of slushie fruit juices with water or milk (we never tried the latter). We especially liked frozen Cas juice (some kind of fruit, a little sweet and sour) and something called “limonada hierbabuena”, which was a mint, lemon slushie with just the right amount of sweetness.

We also liked a local dish named Casado, which we were able to find in a vegetarian version. It’s very delicious and nice to look at. It consists of rice, black beans, salad, vegetables (instead of meat), fried bananas, and salsa arranged on a plate.

Mobility

We found getting around by public transport in Costa Rica a bit frustrating. In Panamá, for example, we just went to a local bus station and waited a maximum of one hour because there were a lot of small buses going all the time. Costa Rica seems to have a more organized system with fewer but bigger buses. But there is no reliable source of information about when buses are going from which exact place.

This is because there exist many many different small to large bus companies, arriving and departing at different places at different schedules and you can’t rely on the information on the internet – if there is any. There are also no schedules at stops only at big bus terminals. We learned to better always ask the locals the hard way.

There is also a positive aspect of this, in these bigger buses you always had your seat (exact seat number) and they were more comfortable and spacious. It is also possible to book the trips in advance (mainly only at bigger bus terminals) and you even got a kind of receipt for the luggage you put into the bus trunk. The air conditioning was not always working though and we never even expect the offered WiFi to work.

People

We did get in contact with only some of the locals, but all seemed very friendly and eager to help. Even having a language barrier they tried to show us around and explain things. We enjoyed that a lot.

It also happened twice that somebody approached us and warned us of potential theft happening on the bus or in the city we were about to go to. We see it as a positive sign when people care about random tourists and warn them instead of drawing the conclusion that evil is all around us 😉

Safety

In Costa Rica, we always felt very safe. Maybe also because we haven’t visited big cities. We heard about pick-pocketing and theft being a thing, but also while waiting for our bus next to a highway in the middle of the night, everything was just fine.

Also, I expected a lot more annoying insects, spiders, and other creepy animals, but even when running around in nature or having lights on at night we were surprised by the lack of insects.

Cost

The prices are quite high compared to the surrounding countries. This starts at accommodation prices, but it also got apparent in restaurants and in the supermarket. But if you search a bit we were still able to find good accommodation and food for a fair price. Also avoiding the main tourist spots helps.

Some examples: the cheapest we had was 26$ per room per night for a very basic room, with its own bedroom without AC and breakfast. The most expensive was 50$ including breakfast and facilities like a pool and garden.

You can also get a simple bean, rice, and meat dish for 6$ and an ordinary Pizza for 12$.

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