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Has anyone driven from the USA to Costa Rica? Your trip experiences and any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Joe FettersI have two friends that drove from San Diego and it is not for the light hearted. If you do it do it for the adventure because there is no practical reason to drive there. They told me the worst part of the trip was through Mexico, must really look out for banditos in that last stretch before entering Central America. Lots of hassles at borders and having to bribe police every time you are pulled over. Breaking down and having to wait until you can locate the part you need, or having someone jerry rig your vehicle and just pray it holds! There advice was to hook up with others making the trip and caravan it down. They found people along the way and did this. Also these were two surfers in there 20’s with a lot of time on there hands. There is also a web site/blog with stories/advice on making the drive google around and i’m sure you will find it. How ever they made it and had a lot of fun along with he heart ache but said they would never do it again, Good luck!
In addition to everything Lotus says . . .
I know some folks who tried it. Got a little south of Mexico City and found that maps were unreliable, no one spoke (or would speak) English, and (are you ready for this?) they couldn’t spend their money. Neither gas stations nor restaurants nor banks would accept U.S. dollars, AND all they could get out of ATMs was U.S. dollars!
A friend of mine and I did it. I documented our adventure in my blog,
http://www.maxtower.com/panamaWe drove from Portland, OR to Panama. It took us 2.5 weeks of solid driving. You don’t want to do it unless you really just want to for the adventure. Otherwise its just a huge hassle. I had a lot of fun on my trip, but if you don’t care about finding all the undiscovered beaches between the US an CR, then it won’t appeal to you. Crossing each border takes about 2-3 hours. The roads are not ideal for long trips. Actually the roads in CR were the worst that we experienced. So if you can handle CR driving, then the other countries are fine.
Mtbomb
Thanks for your reply.
It sounds like driving a couple of trucks from Washington state to CR might not be a good idea. Loading them on a boat and shipping them might be much better.My girlfriend and I made the drive in May of 2005. Neither of us spoke hardly any Spanish at all but read everything we could about making the drive. http://www.drivemeloco.com was pretty helpful but also gave some bad advice on “shortcuts”. We took 6 weeks, the odometer registered about 5,000 miles from LA to Costa Rica. We had ZERO problems with police, banditos, rudeness, etc. It was a dream trip and a trip of a lifetime. The border crossings are the worst part of the trip. Several places suggested hiring one of the kids that essentially work at the border and let them speed you through the process. Bad advice. We got into Mexico on our own no problem, entered Guatemala perfectly, but for some reason decided to hire someone upon entering Honduras. The two guys tries to extort $200 out of us and gave us lots of reasons why it was necessary. We just stonewalled, said we don’t have $200, ordered them to take us to the person that wanted the $200, of course no one at the border was asking for the bribe, and eventually got through the border. Entering Nicaruaga was no problem and Costa Rica was relatively easy. So bottom line, driving was doable, we got there with lots of our stuff, a great car that we could rely on, and a great experience. Of course, anything could happen during those 5,000 miles but its not the landmine, bandito filled route that people claim. The one rule that we NEVER violated though was we NEVER drove at night. That seems to be when the banditos operate and the crooked cops work.
We drove a 1993 Toyota 4Runner. Paid $5k for it in the US for the purpose of driving it to CR. We were allowed two 90 periods and then had to pay to import the vehicle. The total import cost was $3,400. We drove it in CR for two years and sold it this past year for $8,400.
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