Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
We drove our 2002 Isuzu Trooper from Illinois to Costa Rica on January 2 arived in Costa Rica on January 11 enjoyed every mile. Duty on our car was about $7800. value in U.S.A. was $9500 hope this helps
We drove from Illinois to Costa Rica in January of 2008. I can tell you first thing that if you do not speak Spanish you should not take this trip. The borders take 3 to 5 hours. There are little kids there who want to help (for a fee of course) and they might rip you off or there are adults there who really want to help and will for a fee. It is almost a must to have help. Treat the border people like you would want to be treated and you will be fine. Always stay in a big city and at a gated hotel for your vehicle. Plan your day on this because you want to be in your hotel before dark. The gas was cheaper in Mexico than anywhere else. It is a wonderful trip. We took 9 days and there is no way you could make it in one day. We drove the secondary roads and not the toll roads so we could see the scenery. I would recommend this trip to anyone who speaks Spanish. We own a home one the Nicoya pennisula and have been going by plane for ten years. We hope to do this trip again in a few years.
what year make and model is your car. we made the trip in january from IL. and left the car in Costa Rica after making it legal.
Even if there were only two of us we would have felt safe. The most important thing is to have someone speak fluent Spanish. As I said before this is the most important thing of driving. Actually Mexico was one of the easiest borders we crossed. Make sure you have all of the papers for the vehicle. We actually made copies of our papers but they did not use them. They had us make copies at the border. The people were all friendly and helpful. Just treat them like you would like to be treated. We usually had someone at the border crossing who wanted to help us— for money of course– but it is well worth it to have them take you where you had to go.
We did not take our pet. He is too old and does not do well in the heat so I’m sorry I do not know about the laws.We drove a 2002 Izzu Trooper with about 50,000 miles on it. It performed perfectly. We carried some spare parts for the vehicle but fortunately we need none of these parts.
We traveled about 3800 miles and gas cost about $950. It was a long time in the car but we stopped pretty often and some days we had to quit driving so we could find a hotel before dark so it wasn’t too bad.
