abbykdc

hi all. we are planning a one week trip to costa rica in march and have definitely settled on staying half the time in monteverde and half the time in quepose/manuel antonio.

based on everything i've read, i think we'd like to forgo the car rental and bank on taxis but are having some trouble figuring out the best way to get from point a to point b.

we arrive in san jose around 1 pm and were planning to go directly to monteverde for 2 nights.

a friend suggested that we go from monteverde to san jose and spend the night before heading to quepos. is that the best way to go? we don't really want to see much around san jose (given our short time we'd rather spend it in manuel antonio)

we plan to spend 2-3 nights in manuel antonio and have a flight out of san jose at 2pm

the questions i have are

-is it best to use san jose as the hub between monteverde and manuel antonio or can we hire a taxi to take us directly from monteverde and manuel antonio?

-is there any reason to go to manual antonio first, followed by monteverde?

-can we leave quepos really early and just go to san jose the day of our flight? are there flights from quepos to san jose? if so, are they reliably on time/otherwise sketchy?

dariow

I am also travelling to Costa Rica in March, and I plan to fly from Quepos to San Jose. I was told though to allow a lot of extra time in case the flight is grounded due to weather in which case, I would have to take a ground shuttle to San Jose.

cuchi

Pura Vida!!

Ok, first transportation from Monteverde to Manuel Antonio may take around 5 hours on private transportation, you can also take the grayline shuttle sevice from Monteverde to Quepos. I won´t recommend to stay the night between in San Jose, it is not needed, just leave Monteverde in the morning so that you can get there after lunch. As per flights from Quepos to San Jose, yes there are 2 companies: Naturair with 4 flights to San Jose (20 minutes flight) Then you have to take a taxi to the airport, around 20 minutes more. Now land transportation on a private service Manuel Antonio-Airport would take around 4 hours.

I would recommend to visit first Monteverde and end your vacation at Manuel Antonio.
If you need further help, just email me back.
Enjoy your vacation in CR.

MNP

We went from Monteverde to Manuel Antonio with a private driver with no need to stop in San Jose as we did not even drive though San Jose. I think our driver must have been going quickly because it only took us 4 hours to get there. It was a pleasant drive and we were able to stop at Rio Tarcoles on the way to see the Crocodiles. We bookd out private transfer with Monteverde Transfers and really enjoyed it.

After 3 days in MA we hopped on a 20 minute flight back to San Jose. The flight time was realible for us and actually we left early since everyone showed up early. I believe there were about 5 flights leaving MA everyday heading to San Jose....

MNP

Forgot to mention we flew Sansa Air...

larryn

I just retuend from CR and found the drive from Monteverde to Quepos to be very easy. No need to go near San Jose. It was nice to go to the sunny beach after the cool rainy mountains (they are having an unusually rainy "dry" season, I was told). In the morning, we were able to drive from Quepos to the airport in San Jose easily in about 3+ hours (traffic picks up later- there are lots of one-lane bridges on the coast road!). We had our own car- it is very easy to drive yourself around CR.