Costa Rica hotels/itinerary

[heyney]

I will be in Costa Rica for 5 short nights and here's the tentative plan:

-Fly into San Jose & rent a car to drive to La Fortuna
-Spend 2-3 nights
-Drive to Jaco, Spend 1-2 nights
-Last night will be in San Jose due to departure time

What hotel would you recommend in either area?
Things to do in Jaco?
Where did you exchange US dollars?

Any other info you want to share is appreciated!

Tia!

[bullsgirl]

I went to Costa Rica for 5 nights in March. In La Fortuna we stayed in Arenal Springs, which was very good for the $125 price range. If you have a higher budget I highly recommend Arenal Nayara next door.

We did not go to Jaco. We did Tamarindo, which we absolutely loved!

We had no need to exchange currency. US dollars and credit cards were accepted pretty much everywhere.

[heyney]

Thanks for the info, I hadn't thought about CR accepting USD and CC.

I will look into Tamarindo, what did you do there?

We are planning to drive ourselves and make a big circle back to San Jose.

[bullsgirl]

We drove also. It was pretty easy to drive around there. In Tamarino we did a catamaran tour, which was awesome, and we bummed around on the beach a lot. Beaches are really nice there. We also ate a lot of good food and heard live music there. We stayed at the Mirador B & B, which I could not recommend highly enough. The owners were so helpful with finding restaurants and activities. We also stopped at Volcano Brew Co. on the drive between the 2 cities, which had great food and beer and an awesome view of Lake Arenal.

[fabkc]

Check out Manuel Antonio just south of Jaco. We stopped in Jaco for lunch one day and thought it felt very "Myrtle Beach" in comparison to the more quaint area in Manuel Antonio. We stayed at the Arenal there and the Nayara in Fortuna. It is a very popular circuit and we ran into a lot of the same people in both areas. We also drove ourselves and had few problems. We did get a speeding ticket, but we also got to stop at a coffee plantation that we really enjoyed.