I did this trip with a friend in June 2019. It turned out to be one of the best trips I've ever been on. Costa Rica is an incredible country – beautiful scenery, amazing animals and so much to do! The one thing that I can't say was incredible was the food. It was average to be honest. The best meals we had were pizza, chicken wings and a steak dinner. The steak was incredible and so was the pizza but other than the first meal we had (called Casado), the food was okay! We ended up having more foreign cuisines in Costa Rica, like Mexican tacos and Middle Eastern Shawarma.

A quick overview of the trip, we flew into San Jose and then rented a car from there. We drove more than 1000 km in 10 days. I ended up doing all the driving and did not regret it for a second (or maybe just on this one drive… more on this later). But the scenery was stunning and with some good music, it was like heaven on earth. We drove from San Jose to Monteverde to Tamarindo to La Fortuna and then back to San Jose. Unfortunately, I don't have proof we went to Sand Jose and Monteverde since the SD card on my camera got corrupted after a few days and my friend's phone stopped working due to water damage. I guess we had too much fun? I'll simply have to write about San Jose and Monteverde... The few photos I do have were taken on my phone.

The trip started off in San Jose. We had an afternoon flight from Toronto to San Salvador, a one hour layover and then another flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. We got to our hostel late at night, had a quick meal at the hostel's restaurant and went to bed. The next day, we did a walking tour in the city and we ended up getting lunch with the tour guide and his tour guide friends. This happened to be the best meal of the trip. We had Casado (a Costa Rican staple meal of rice, means, some meat and egg) at local food court. We had some craft beers too and they shared some cake with us.

We then stopped at a supermarket to pick up a few things for our road trip and bought a SIM card (which ended up being useless), and then headed back to the hostel to meet the rental car company. They dropped off the car for us! This is where freedom began.

We got the car that afternoon/evening and then got ready to leave the next morning for Monteverde! But before this...the Toronto Raptors were playing the Golden State Warriors in Game 5 of the NBA finals. We were up 3-1 and had a chance to close out the warriors on home court. We were pumped to watch this... in Costa Rica! The tour guides we had lunch with suggested an Irish sports bar where we could watch the game so we thought there would be some sort of crowd/following? We were wrong! The bar was completely empty, and we had to ask them to change it from the X-games to the NBA finals... in Spanish. I missed Jack and Leo. But we ordered some chicken wings, which were awesome. This photo doesn't fully capture their awesomeness but they were huge!

These were some of the best wings I've had. Anyways, the Raptors lost which wasn't the worst thing in the world since the bar was empty. This was where Kawhi had his crazy run of 10 straight points in the fourth quarter and Nick Nurse called that questionable timeout. Igoudala hit the game-sealing three-pointer and we went home sad. But it was a blessing in disguise given where we ended up watching game 6!!

A Few Pro-Tips

Renting a car in Costa Rica is the best way to travel, hands down. Once you get out of the city, the driving is beautiful, and you can't beat the feels of good music and amazing scenery. A few tips...

- Get out of the city as soon as possible. The driving in San Jose was a bit scary.

- Make sure if you are visiting some of the towns in the mountains, such as La Fortuna or Monteverde, that you give yourself ample time to get there before dark. The roads are winding and the lighting is limited... we found out the hard way.

That being said, renting a car is fairly easy. I ended up doing a ton of research one Sunday before the trip and became an expert in Costa Rican insurance – which is quite complicated. My recommendations are the following:

- Use a local rental car company. The service is awesome, and they are cheaper than your Budgets, Alamos, Enterprise Rent-A-Cars, etc. We ended up using Vamos Rent-a-Car. Their service was great!.

- Check your credit card for car rental insurance, it could save you a few hundred USD. Kudos to the following blogs as they were the source of all my knowledge: My Tan Feet and Costa Rica Guide.

- Book a 4-wheel drive SUV. The roads can be a bit unpaved and bumpy at times. I have no idea if this helped but it sounds way cooler if I can suggest that.