Travel article: Rincon de la Vieja

My mum joined us for a road trip around Costa Rica for 3 weeks!

After many problems around car rentals booking cancelled, our hostel "losing" our laundry for half a day and a rental company screwing us, we couldn't wait to discover what we were looking for in Costa Rica: animals and tropical lush vegetation!

A bit more luxury for us as we rented a 4x4 and we quickly realised how essential it is in Costa Rica.  The country is way richer than other countries we travelled to but surprisingly the local transport network is not as developed (remember our 14h to do 300kms or 6h to do 200kms?)

After some misunderstandings around the insurance and nobody being able to explain us the details, we took off for a hike close by Liberia in Rincon de la Vieja to see a beautiful waterfall. First shock of Costa Rica: the entry fee to get into the national park... a minimum of $15 USD for each park!

We walked for 10 kilometres around landscapes that are super dry in this part of Costa Rica. I clearly didn't expect that.

The waterfall is quite nice and high and we took a quick dip (despite being forbidden!)

We also realised that the type of travellers changed : we were used to the backpackers from Europe, here in Costa Rica it's mostly retired Americans and Canadians.

Some recommandations:

# don't book a car with Apex. The address given was wrong , the price given during the booking was half of what we paid at the end and the car was crap! We thought we would loose some parts of the car many times

# we rented our 4x4 with dollar. Good quality car and prices. $1100 USD for 3 weeks

# Rincon de la vieja waterfall is nice but the hike to go there is a bit repetitive and in super dry landscapes. $15 USD entry fee for the park

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