Anyone planned their own Costa Rica trip?

[seapeace]

I'm looking at taking the family (me, DH, 3 kids who will be 10, 13 and 15) to Costa Rica one summer and trying to price it up. I prefer to plan holidays myself as I like to choose my own hotels (we would prioritise good wildlife and smaller hotels over luxury for example) and have more time in fewer places. For Costa Rica, I have been looking at itineraries offered by different companies and think I know what we'd want to do - San Jose - Tortuguero - Arenal Volcano - Monteverde. I'm trying to balance wildlife watching, but including some more adventurous activities (zip lines, hot springs, hanging bridges) for my daughter who thinks wildlife is 'boring.' My main question is - does anyone know how easy it is to organise transfers between these areas, including getting to the specific lodges? I have seen 2/3 day packages to Tortuguero but they return you to San Jose, whereas we'd want to go straight on to La Fortuna area. Also, is it easy enough to book your own wildlife tours (e.g. jungle night hikes, canoe trips etc) yourself, or are things booked up by the big tour operators? In my experience elsewhere, you need a good tour guide to spot the wildlife. If anyone else has done similar and has any tips I'd really appreciate it!

I have done Costa Rica as a self planned itinerary although we rented a car to get us around.
I do a trip like this every year and only use a tour company when it is not possible or safe to do it myself.
I spend plenty of time planning and researching working out what to do and how to join it together, use the tour companies plans as a base to get ideas.

We did it ourselves too and rented a car. We did get a 4x4 but only needed the 4-wheel drive once. I think we did 4 drives of around 4 hours each going from San Jose - Caribbean Coast - Arenal- Pacific Coast. We also did a shorter one from Caribbean Coast to Siqueries where we did white-water rafting and more wildlife.

Generally just organised tours through the places we were staying or some things you can just pitch up - ziplining, the hanging bridges, even hot springs. White-water rafting, snorkelling and wildlife tours we did through lodges. We were staying at a posh hotel in Arenal so didn't do anything through them as they were really expensive. On the Pacific coast, we did surfing and horse-riding just by using places near where we were staying.

@Stowickthevast do you mind me asking where you snorkelled and if it was good? We love snorkelling but I hadn't really factored that into the plans.

Good to know we can plan ourselves then. I actually hadn't thought about car hire, but that could be a good option.

Following as planning similar in 2-3 years

@seapeace we went snorkelling on the Caribbean coast in Parque Nacional Cahuita. It was ok, not amazing, but on the way back we landed on the point and saw a sloth really close up in a tree and a snake which was amazing. The clarity of the water does depend on time of year. We went near the end of August.

Been there, done that and got the t-shirt to prove it... literally!

We don't book package holidays, or stay in hotels as a rule either.

We went in 2019 with a 3 year old and a 2 year old and had a blast.

Booking your own tours is easy, but it's always an advantage if you have some command of Spanish if you want to keep prices down, smaller companies don't always have English speaking phone staff I've found, but you can almost always get cheaper prices if you call up rather than going online.

Cash "on the day" pricing is usually cheaper than online too.

We flew with Avianca to San Jose via Bogota and they're lovely with little ones. We've flew with them before and since when going to South America.

We stayed in a 2 bed villa in Playa Flamingo, I booked it on Airbnb and it was lovely, I think it cost us about £300 for 10 days.

We hired a car from sixt at San Jose airport and that was a good decision. Public transport is spotty in all but the most built up places, and I personally don't trust taxis. We only had a 2wd car and that was fine for us, although I think if the kids were older at the time and wanting to do more outdoor activities we would have had more benefit from getting a 4wd.

We did an independent trip. Flew into San Jose arriving early evening, so just stayed near the airport as original plan was to fly the next morning to Tortuguero. That flight was cancelled so joined the coach transfer to the lodge as part of the lodge package. We then flew from Tortuguero to Arenal (La Fortuna), which was a fabulous way to travel and see the scenery. Picked up a hire car there and went independently to zip wires, white water rafting, cocoa farm etc. Then drove to Monteverde for the cloud forest and hanging bridges before spending our last few nights at an AI resort to relax. Drove back to San Jose and returned the car at the airport before the flight home. Think I used Booking.com for most of the hotels.

Thanks all, really helpful to know I'm on the right track.

@PureRed1992 that's some useful tips on booking..sadly my Spanish isn't up to much (evening class 15 years ago!) so I think we will be relying on Google translate!

@Azure that pretty much sounds like the itinerary I'm planning..I hadn't thought of internal flights but might look into that..

We didn't do it ourselves - but the hotels we stayed in seemed to do lots of trips, so I'm sure that side of things could be done fairly easily. We found that the quality of guides etc was generally extremely high.

We did your itinerary, but also included Manuel Antonio (a bit touristy but very beautiful) and a day in Uvita for whale watching.

If you can, include Osa. Stupendous place. It would be a challenge to find the wildlife there boring, even for a non-devotee. The flight down there is amazing in itself.

https://www.globalfamilyadventures.com/

We used this company and would recommend- it's the only trip we've ever not planned ourselves! It was great value and our driver was fab. A good few years ago though.

We did it ourselves and with public transport or mini van transfers.
Some activity companies will do onward transfers.
E.g. we used exploradores for white water rafting. They pick up from a range of locations (Cahuita for us), take you to their rafting centre for breakfast, do rafting, then shuttled us to San Jose. Same cost as returning to original location.
We used them too for la fortuna to tortuguero.
You could enquire about the reverse trip?
Our overall route was SJ - Samara - Monteverde - La Fortuna (do the jeep-boat-jeep transfer $30 a person, stunning journey) - Tortuguero - Cahuita (take the boat - fabulous, and the driver kept showing us cool wildlife) - SJ.
Snorkeling in Cahuita wasn't the best snorkeling ever but a nice morning nonetheless.

Oooh lovely, some great ideas to look into here, thanks guys. I hadn't come across the jeep/boat transfer before and also hadn't really thought of going anywhere else on the east coast so will check that out too.

thanks for the tour recommendation @ThwopGoesTheMooncup - not come across them before.

@seapeace Cahuita was probably our favourite spot. The national park is much cheaper and teaming with wildlife. No guides needed, you can't help but spot creatures. The rainforest is next to the beach which is beautiful. Lovely low key town.

It's a good while since I was there but we did it independently and rented a 4x4 to get around. We needed it as we were there at the start of rainy season and some of the areas we went to didn't have paved roads. We travelled all along the Pacific coast from Dominical (surf trip) and then went inland to the cloud forest, volcanoes etc. It's probably more developed by now though.

We went as a family of 2 adults and 2 teens in 2022 for 2 weeks.
We did your itinerary too! I think it ended up costing approximately £15K all in. Flights were about £4k, we went mid range hotels and used the tours and transport that they offered were possible. Fabulous wildlife but not the place to go for snorkelling - that was disappointing.