Luke Reynolds

Denouement Dashboard - Costa Rica 🇨🇷

Luke Reynolds -

This is the place I will cover the stats of each country as we go.

As usual, follow along at:

And follow along HERE, of course…

Anyway, let's get into it:

Country: 22-26/5/23

Tracks:

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as tracks IN that country.

Planes:

  • Medellin --> Bogota --> San Jose = 1,487 km

Automobiles:

  • Airport transfers = 34km
  • Ubers around town = probably only around 20km

Walking:

  • 19.5km

Total = 1,560.5 km

Expenses:

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as an expense IN that country.

Total expense: $1,816.38 AUD

Total Days: 5 Days inclusive

Expense per day = $363.28 AUD/Day

Expenses Breakdown (mathematical, not emotional):

Food is expensive in Costa Rica...

Travel Bingo:

Not a huge number of tourists around San Jose. Just a central city of people going about their business. So not a particularly exciting Bingo Card.

It is probably also a result of us declining to do heaps of day tours out from San Jose, rather just chilled around the city.

An explanation of Travel Bingo is here.

Culinary Corner by a Non-Foodie:

  • I'll mention this a few times - food is expensive in San Jose - but good.
  • In the Escalante neighbourhood there are restaurants everywhere.
  • The coffee is still good here.
  • Ignore the 'traditional Costa Rican' coffee - it's just black coffee filtered through what looks like an old sock; go somewhere with an actual coffee machine and it is excellent.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Costa Rica, or at least San Jose, is very expensive - $6 for a loaf of bread, $55 for breakfast for two, $5-6 coffee etc.
  • I don't know why this is but fair warning.

Recommendations:

  • Escalante is the neighbourhood we stayed in - it is very nice and safe; close to a hospital and university, it seemed to have a lot of young professionals living there.
  • And we stayed in the 'URBN Escalante' building - has gym, pool (offline while we were there), function rooms, library, dog park etc - very swish.
  • Stay for a couple of days then get out to jungles and beaches and mountains - something we didn't do because we were coming from jungles and mountains and heading to the beach. You probably don't need to spend the full 5 days in the city.

Summary:

  • I've called this a Costa Rica summary but we were only in San Jose - so grain of salt.
  • Costa Rica is well developed, stable and expensive.
  • No standing army so they don't have the history of coups like everywhere else in the Americas.
  • We probably stayed a bit too long, but it was a nice little chill week.
  • Uber works.
  • Rappi for food delivery.
  • It's very expensive for some reason.

Thanks for reading along.

The next country update will come... after the next country.

Weekly updates will come...weekly.

Luke.