Is driving in Costa Rica safe?

Short answer:

Yes, driving in Costa Rica is safe, for the most part.

Long answer:

Depends on many factors, such as where you’re headed and how late into the night you’re driving, but read on to learn about my personal experience!

Costa Rica Vibes

So, my family and I had the chance to travel to Costa Rica for my niece’s graduation, who graduated from UWC Costa Rica, a very competitive two-year residential pre-university program. Our hotel was in Santa Ana, San Jose, and we had several days before the event to play tourists.

We stayed in the beautiful Santa Ana Hilton hotel that had a lovely scenery.

If you’re familiar (or not) with Costa Rica, you may know that San Jose isn’t the most touristic city for exploring and adventuring. I hadn’t initially realized how far the beaches were from San Jose. We absolutely wanted to explore—see the beach—for the kids—or visit a National Park to see some nature, or waterfalls, such as in La Fontana. The beach that was recommended by locals was Manuel Antonio Beach in Quepos located in the Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, 3 hours away. It was voted as one of the top 25 beaches in the world by Tripadvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Award 2019! Given that we had the kids with us, we chose to the beach. La Fontana would have been more ideal with just my husband and I.

Isn’t Costa Rica a Third World Country?

Often when we hear “Third World Country”, we envision the worst. Well, there are levels to developing countries, in my opinion. For a “Third World Country”, my observation was that Costa Rica is still developing, yes, but at least appears to be an organized country with drivable roads— if I were to compare it to D.R.Congo, where driving is a disaster and almost impossible to drive to other parts of the country.

Our dilemma was that we hadn’t exactly planned to drive in Costa Rica and mostly relied on Uber at first. Upon more research, one Uber driver even offered to drive us there (off record, as a private driver). Not to get paranoid, but I had no plans to get kidnapped or worse. Not only that, it would be annoying having to rely on someone if we wanted to move from one place to another, AND he wanted to charge about $200, equally the same price as renting a car for a few days and driving ourselves. The drive was about 2-3 hours. We got his number to be polite but knew we weren’t going to go that route.

Where to get a rental in San Jose, besides the airport?

We got our rental (Avis) from InterContinental Costa Rica at Multiplaza Mall.

Thanks to Reddit, I felt confident that we could just drive ourselves with no issues. Well, there were a lot of comments about safety and chaotic roads, so we were expecting the worst. I should have known better. In my mind, I imagined roads similar to the motherland; hence, Congo, Tanzania… but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that what most Reddit commenters referred to as a chaotic drive m, was a smooth sailing to me, for the most part. We used Waze, and the directions were straightforward. Within 3 hours, we made it.

Beware of scammers/imposters

One comment that helped was that we were warned about the fake “workers” who harass you to park in their parking space but want to scam you into buying tickets you don’t need. They even stood in front of our car, preventing us from driving further. So, when you arrive in Quepos, whatever you do, don’t roll down your window. They are very aggressive. My husband fell for it (lol), and I had to remind him, that: “they are scammers—keep driving!” Eventually, we kept driving and found a parking spot much closer to the entrance of Manuel Antonio National Park. So, yeah, you have been warned!

Entry to Manuel Antonio

Let me rewind a bit, one annoying thing was that because we decided to go to the beach last minute, I got our entry tickets last minute. You must purchase a ticket online because they have dedicated slots and only allow a certain amount of people into the National Park (where the beach is) per slot. Sounds easy? The issue is that you have to create an account and wait for an email confirmation that may take a lifetime to land in your inbox. I registered around 9 PM and didn’t get the link until 1 AM! I was in and out of sleep and kept seeing the slots available decreasing! My kids would have been devasted if I couldn’t get those tickets. We were packed and set to leave at 5 AM. When I finally registered in the middle of the night, I got the last 5 slots for entry at 9 AM. We wanted to get there early, which I’m glad we did because when we did get there, the beach got super crowded after 11 AM.

Anyway, we made it safely, hiked for 30 minutes through the forest/park, spotted some iguanas, monkeys, and finally made it to the beach where my kids played nonstop for 4 hours!

I love the beach for relaxation and reading in nature. With the kids, it’s challenging because I have to keep my eyes on them, but hubby and I rotated “watch-duty.”

We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant—the food was just okay—nothing to rave about. Then later that afternoon, we headed back to Santa Ana, San Jose!

Was the drive worth it?

Absolutely!

The drive to Manuel Antonio Beach in Quepos was worth it and simply beautiful: witnessing the natural wonder, discovering other beach towns and small-towns along the way, and seeing the majestic greeneries of Costa Rica, was a beautiful experience.

Now let me add that it was the start of the “wet season” but thankfully we didn’t get rained on. And was hot! 80+ degrees (in late May).

Do I consider Manuel Antonio Beach a top 25 beach in the world? I’ll report back when I’ve visited more than 30 beaches around the world, but if I’m quite honest, it was beautiful, but for some reason Laguna Beach in Orange County is still one of my all-time favorite beaches so far.

Time for me to explore more, I suppose?

Costa Rica: Driving From San Jose to Manuel Antonio Beach, Quepos