Rental Car in Arenal
 

You have all helped my husband and I plan our trip to Costa Rica next month. We are staying four nights at Lost Iguana in Arenal and would like to know if you recommend renting a car once there or are the hotel shuttles/taxis enough? I know on Lost Iguana's website it mentions you can rent a car once you get there for a day or two. We were wondering if anyone has done that? Thank you.

Lost Iguana is pretty far out of town; a car might make it easier to get around on your own schedule (and cheaper too).

We don't rent a car because we do a lot of tours, and they'll pick you up and drop you off. A lot of people do like to rent one though just because taxis can add up - about $25 if you want to go all the way into the center of town. We've also taken the Lost Iguana employee shuttle into town for dinner, but you have to go on their schedule. Not sure if they still offer that or not. If you want the freedom of having your own car, the roads are in pretty good shape. It's really just one main road going straight into town. LI is right by the lake and the Hanging Bridges and fairly close to Sky Trek. If you don't want to drive, taxis are pretty easy to get, just have the hotel call one for you.

If you take tours, you can ask them to drop you back off in town rather than at the hotel if you want to eat dinner in town - saving you one way on taxi fare.

We found it cheaper to rent a car at the airport, Liberia, than pay for our family of 4 the extras in transportation. It was going to add $80 per event for us to be picked up at Lost Iguana's not to mention the fee to get to Arenal from Liberia. We were pleasantly surprised by the roads, though we were glad that we decided to spend the night in Liberia since we arrived after dark, and drive in the daylight. So for us, the math was pretty easy to figure out before we left home that renting a car would be the cheapest means of travel for us, and we knew we would be on main roads and found that they were not that much different from rural Wisconsin, so we were fine with them.

VSD, here's my advice on rental cars. We just returned from a Make sure that you rent a all-wheel drive (AWD) and preferably a Mitsubishi Montero or Toyota brand (do not opt for Suzuki). Secondly, go for the full coverage even though it costs more. We did not regret as the roads to get to the Arenal National Park and some of the hotels close to volcano are all unpaved (gravel) road and we ended up blowing two of our tires on a Grand Vitara (Suzuki). Fortunately, we had full coverage and without any questions being asked they sent us another SUV (Mitsubishi Montero) the next morning and even reimbursed us for the cab fare from where we were stranded to our hotel at Arenal. We went with Dollar Rental. Don't forget to add the GPS ($9 per day) as it really helped us find our way everywhere without any issues. Drving is fun but long and tedious as they do not have 4 lane highways except for Highway 27 which is a fairly new one but you pay the price for the tolls. Dollars and Colons are interchangeable but a good idea to be equipped with local currencies. Another tip is to ensure that whenever you use your visa or master, make sure they process it as a credit transaction and not as a case davance transaction. They do it intentionally so that they get the cash immediately but we end up paying $10 transaction fee per transaction. Three of my transactions ended up being cash advance transaction and one of them was for the departure tax ($28 per person) we paid at Liberia airport. Good luck with your trip.

Thank you all for your advice and information. Volcanogirl we do plan on taking a lot of tours so that's a good idea to have them drop us off in town and then take a taxi. We will have to look at our itinerary and decide. Thank you.