Spain

In October 2022, my husband Mike and I booked three roundtrip tickets to Spain to accompany my mom to celebrate her big 60th birthday.

Spain is such a beautiful country with a vast history. It’s apart of Europe and includes 17 autonomous regions with Madrid being the capital city and home to the Royal Palace as well as many large historical buildings. Spain is known for it’s tapas, Flamenco music and dance, the siesta, and lots of super cool architecture.

Getting there

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How to get around

Based on the trip we had planned to make 3 different stops on the pacific side of the country, we decided to rent a car.

A lot of people warned us around driving in Costa Rica because there are a lot of unfinished roads with potholes, but knowing a lot of people rent cars to get around Costa Rica, we decided to proceed with it ourselves and I’m really glad we did.

Yes, there are many roads that are unfinished with many, many potholes but we found it all to be very manageable as long as your are a cautious and safe driver. Driving worked really well for us because we wanted the flexibility to drive 4 hours south to our second destination during our trip, which would have been made more complicated and more expensive if we needed to rent shuttles to take us around.

While there, we learned over the last few years, there was a newly paved road that was built which connected the north area near Tamarindo to the south side near Santa Teresa which really made our trip a breeze.

Type of rental

For two of the three Airbnb’s we rented in Costa Rica, they pretty much required us to have a vehicle with 4-wheel drive to get to the property, so that was very top of mind for us when it came to renting.

During our research for the trip, we also noticed many people generally just recommended to get a 4-wheel drive vehicle to safely get around the roads so I think from now on, we will always rent there with a car that has 4-wheel drive capabilities when visiting Costa Rica.

The cost

The cost of renting a car is not necessarily cheap but again, depending on your trip could be the cheaper option. Our rental costed us about $100/per day including insurance which I highly recommend getting. Remember the roads are still pretty bad in certain areas which could cause damage to the car and if you’re reading this blog, you probably haven’t spent that much time driving in Costa Rica before – so better to be safe than sorry.

Through our research we saw this cost of about $100/day to be the average of renting a car in Costa Rica and that if you find anything that looks significantly lower, you are probably looking at the cost before adding insurance and other protections on the vehicle. This may be the company trying to capture your business as a customer before showing you what the actual cost is going to be once you arrive.

Do you research with this and set yourself up with clear expectations for how much it’s going to cost you and it’ll be a breeze.

We had a great experience renting through Alamo and would definitely use them again in the case we need to rent a car in Costa Rica.

When to visit

Mike and I got marred in July and went straight to our honeymoon so we visited Costa Rica during it’s rainy season which runs from May to mid-December.

Leading up to our trip, we checked the weather and it was honestly hilarious how bad it looked. It showed rain, flash floods, thunderstorms, every single day of our trip. We knew we’d make the best of it no matter what, but we thought it would be nice to get at least a little bit of sunshine while we were there! Well, as it turns out, when we got there, we got just that – lots of sunshine! The sun was out each day during our trip. It was perfect.

We learned the weather in Costa Rica is very hard to predict so when you check the weather forecast it’s not really that accurate. If it does rain, it often rains in spurts of time and then moves on.

During our trip, we got mostly nice and sunny weather throughout the day, and then at night it would completely switch to heavy rainfall and thunderstorms. Only a few times during the day it rained, and each time we saw it coming and took cover before it got to us.

We heard that the worst weather days in Costa Rica happen when there’s a dramatic peak in precipitation from September into November – with October being the worst. Contrast that with their dry season, where there's nearly no rainfall between January and April.

All in all, we had a blast during our trip in July and the weather was not a huge factor in disrupting our plans. The only excursion we for sure missed out on due to weather was a bioluminescence tour in Paquera which of course would happen in the evening, right around the time the thunderstorms would start.

Must Do’s

La Leona Waterfall hike
This hike was awesome and I highly, highly recommend it. You have the option of getting picked up and shuttled over to the beginning of the hiking spot or driving yourself there (with a 4-wheel drive vehicle) and since we had a car we opted to drive ourselves there.

This hike is advertised as an intermediate hike but it’s definitely more of an adventurous sort of hike on the advanced side so — be warned.

The most hilarious part of the hike was that on the website it says to, “wear good hiking shoes that can get wet” – but we soon discovered that not only do your shoes get wet but you fully submerge yourself in water and swim during the hike - an actual LOL sort of moment when we realized that.

This was a private hike and our tour guide was a local Costa Rican guy named Ner who was an absolutely wonderful tour guide and a wonderful person to get to know. We stopped at many points along the way to learn about the area and about different wildlife. I felt like we were in safe hands with Ner by our side.

After the hike we ate a delicious Costa Rican meal served to us at the entrance of the hike which was on a small farm with some of the freshest mango juice I have ever drank before.

If I were to do this hike again, I would probably wear shoes that were completely waterproof with the expectations that my feet would be completely submerged in water for a large part of the hike. I would also make sure that we either left our backpack in the car or brought ourselves our own dry bag. Luckily, Ner had a dry bag for the hike (it’s like he knew what he was doing!), and he let us put our wallets, keys, and phones in the dry bag for the duration of the tour.

Ner also took photos and videos of us throughout the hike which was so special! He helps run a personal Instagram account for the tours – @laleona_waterfall – so make sure to check it out and reach out to the account directly if you have questions.

Sunset boat cruise
We did a sunset boat cruise during our stay in Playa Langosta and the boat departed out of Tamarindo. We super lucked out with the weather that day because the night before it was storming pretty hard, but the day we went out it stayed dry all throughout the evening and we got to see an absolutely beautiful sunset.

We had an enjoyable time on the boat cruise which we booked through Airbnb, but I wouldn't necessarily say it was a good enough of an expereince that I’d want to link it here.

The boat cruise was advertised as a snorkeling and sunset cruise but I think it was just not a good time of the year to go snorkeling or something because the water was so foggy that we couldn’t see anything. It was still nice to get in the water during the trip we just were set up with false expectations.

The boat also had an all-you-can-drink bar onboard where we drank many pina coladas and they served us a Costa Rican meal after snorkeling which was very delicious. All in all, it was a good time but I imagine there are many boat cruises that offer a similar experience out of Tamarindo so I recommend doing a bit of research and booking one on your own. When in doubt, check Airbnb!

Surfing
We specifically stayed on the pacific side of Costa Rica, so Mike could go surfing and he had such a blast with it while we were here. Compared to where we live in San Diego, the beaches we visited were much less crowded for surfing than what he was used to – although we did visit during the non-busy season so keep that in mind.

Mike’s a more advanced surfer so with that in mind, the beaches we’d recommend for surfing at would be: Playa Langosta, Playa Negra, Playa Carmen, and Santa Teresa. Based on how many surf lessons we saw going on during the first part of our stay, I believe Tamarindo would be a good surf spot for beginners as well as certain parts of the Santa Teresa area.

Biking around
We had bikes we were allowed to borrow at the first place we stayed at in Playa Langosta and it was so fun to just bike around the area and into Tamarindo. I would definitely recommend renting them if you are visiting and don’t have access to any to borrow. This is a fun way to get to know the area.

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A quick note on shelling – it’s not allowed, don’t do it.
Mike and I love collecting shells and have done quite a bit of shelling in Maui, Hawaii especially while we were living there in 2020. In Costa Rica, there are SO many beautiful shells, all over the place. We got so excited and started collecting them while walking the beach various mornings during our stay.

Sadly, all our shells were confiscated at the airport and with a quick Google search we discovered that bringing shells off of Costa Rica is just not allowed. I wanted to make sure to include this since it was an innocent mistake of ours and to help anyone else who may not realize this as well.

Below is a photo I took of our shell collection that I organized during our final stay in Paquera. At least we can look at this photo and reminisce!