posted by Travel Cat on Mar 26
Hello again, here is an update as promised. We are getting more excited and have made some progress - but still haven’t really got the whole thing organised. We aren’t stressing though, as these things always come together in the end!
We still only have the flight booked, but we have come across a few things in the finer planning that have resulted in a slight change of plans from the original and have held up reserving anywhere with cash!
Accommodation - It seems as though the facilities being offered at different locations in Costa Rica vary greatly, (as does the cost) but we need some essentials that we can’t do without:
1) We want our own private bathroom and there will be no exceptions here.
2) We need 24hr Internet access either in the resort (ideally) or VERY close by.
3) We need a locker or safe available exclusively to us.
4) We need food included or access to 24hr kitchen facilities.
Ideally, we don’t want to pay more than $40/£20 a night for a double - preferably less!!
These don’t appear to be too great an ambition based on what we have been reading online, but many websites do not clarify these details clearly enough so we are having to email them individually for questions. We have already had some negative answers - all politely put, but never-the-less not suitable for our needs.
Location - It would seem that our hope of getting to Puntarenas is nil now, as the accommodation we have found is just not good enough for us in terms of security or internet access. It is also a lot more expensive than elsewhere in Coast Rica. Added to this the transport there is proving difficult:
a) Bus: We can catch the tourist buses from the north down to the south which take at least 10 hours - but they only go so far. To get to the area we want means having to then hire a car for the remainder of the journey, adding another hour or two to the journey time, plus doubling the price. Basically 2 full days used up getting there and back. And a lot of money spent.
b) Plane: $400/£200 EACH.
Needless to say, we are scrubbing this location off our list and looking for another.
Sights - Based on the things we really want to see or experience, we balanced up the remaining locations and totalled up places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do around each area. This showed a slightly more skewed result than we had originally thought, with one place only having a few days worth of things to do and at a higher accommodation and travel cost and another with bucket loads of things to do and which was cheaper and nearer!
So the new schedule is looking more like the below with the original plan in brackets after. I’ve also changed the ‘days’ to ‘nights’ as this is easier to work out:
San Jose - 1 night
Monteverde Region - 15 nights (Monteverde Region - 10 days)
Arenal Volcano Area - 4 nights (Arenal Volcano Area - 4 days)
Las Canas Area - 4 nights (Peninsula de Nicoya - 4 days)
Nicoya Town Area - 4 nights (Puntarenas Region - 10 days)
San Jose - 1 night
That’s now 29 nights (as I worked out too many days in the original plan). We will still lose about 24 hours travelling between the locations in total over the month, but we will get to see everything along the way.
Extra Things - We are also now planning a few days where we just relax as well. Originally we were so excited about everything we could do in Costa Rica, that we hadn’t thought we could just stop for a day or two and soak up the place, maybe just walk around the town and find a nice place to sit and read or something - so this has now been factored in at the cheapest location obviously!
Also, we are starting to look at the New York stop-over as an extra part of the holiday. We have 4 hours on the way there, plus 4 on the way back, so after passport control and the time it takes to check back in - that leaves us about 5/6 hours to see everything of importance to us there. We will no doubt look at a written guide for the city and try to find one of those ‘discover New York in just 4 hours’ or something packs, so we can zip to the main places without getting caught up in Macy’s or somewhere pointless.
Next Steps - Now we need to actually try to book the hotels and hope that they have rooms for when we need them, otherwise we will have to start compromising, and that’s never nice!
We also need to consider how we are getting to the airport and back. The departure flight is early o’clock from Gatwick airport and the return flight lands at even earlier o’clock at Heathrow airport. This broken return will take some research on different transport combinations, so it needs to get done asap. It’s not a simple park the car in one place, as we are going to land somewhere else!
Well, back on the Internet I go!
Cat
Leave a Reply