Flights. Please help!
 

We have a 1:15 pm flight leaving San Jose to go back to the US. We will be at the beach in Santa Teresa/Mal Pais. Should we leave Santa Teresa the night before to go San Jose or can we make the trip early in the morning on the day of our flight? I would like to stay at the beach as long as possible and minimize our time in San Jose. I'm not sure yet if we will be driving (and taking the ferry) or if we will be taking a domestic flight to San Jose from Tambor. How should we proceed?

The official line is that you need to check in at the airport in San Jose at 10:15 a.m. If you were driving that morning, you'd have to leave Santa Teresa before dawn to make the ferry. I would not drive those roads out there in the dark. I'm looking at last year's ferry schedule. (Don't know if it's changed.) It might take a couple of hours to get to the ferries in the first place. The first ferry leaves Tambor for Puntarenas at 6:30 a.m. There's a ferry that leaves Paquera for Puntarenas at 4:30 a.m. Either boat takes around 90 minutes. Then you have another couple of hours' drive to San Jose.

I'd head for San Jose the night before, or look into flying from Tambor.

I agree with Jeff. You should probably leave the night before if driving. If you can get the domestic flight in the morning from Tambor that would get you to San Jose in approx. 30 min. I prefer taking the flight on the way back. It always makes my
departure less stressful and I like to spend as much time in Mal Pais as possible too!

Do either one of you know if it is possible to rent a car once we are in Santa Teresa/Mal Pais? I would love to do fly from San Jose/Tambor but we want to have a car so we can do our own thing (day trip to Montezuma, water falls, etc.)

Yep! They just opened a Budget rental car agency just as you enter the Mal Pais area next to Frank's Place. But you might just want to rent a cuad (ATV). There's a bunch of them for rent now and they're alot of fun! I think they cost around $60/day. Less by the week.