Our [Crazy?!] 8 Day Costa Rica Itinerary - Staying Afloat Blog (2024)

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Going on ‘vacation’ with us is less of a vacation and more of an expedition! This is generally due to the fact that it is a physical incapability for Kat to sit still for more than a few minutes. If wanderlust was a medical condition, she’d need a really strong dose of whatever the doctor if prescribing. Phil tolerates it because he loves the rush (and Kat, of course 😉 And so, we introduce to you our [crazy!] 8 day Costa Rica itinerary.

This will be a first time for both of us to be travelling to Central America and we are very excited to be doing it together! It seems like we’ve seen alot of activity on social media surrounding this beautiful destination lately. From the picturesque volcanoes and stunning waterfalls, to the thermal hot springs and exotic rain forests, this destination has it all! With Costa Rica, we were specifically attracted by two main things:

1. budget travel options;
2. widely recognized ecotourism and sustainable practices.

Is 8 Days Really Enough??

Definitely not! But we’ve seen folks head there for just the weekend (now THAT is crazy!). So we feel pretty good about our decision to visit there for a week. While Costa Rica isn’t a large country, it covers over 51,000 sq km (!20,000 sq mi), it has SO MUCH TO OFFER!! For our first trip, we’ll be spending it in the north end of the country. We’ve secured a rental car and plan to stay in a different town each night over the course of the week. Because the country sits on both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, we decided early in the trip planning stages that we wanted to hit a beach on both coasts. We are also really attracted to the natural beauty of the country and plan to visit several natural wonders inland.

So How Affordable Is It?

So far, our trip cost us less than $1050 USD for the two of us! We purchased round trip flight tickets to San Jose through Spirit Airlines at a STEAL. We reserved our hotels through Bookings.com (see side bar –>), via Ibotta, averaging nightly rates of $45/night (with breakfast included!). And we booked our rental car through Adobe, via mytanfeet.com, which earned us a 20% off discount. We are travelling in the green/wet/off peak season, so that has it’s price point perks as well. If you want to read more about the cost breakdown, check out our post on ‘How We Booked a Trip for Two to Costa Rica for Less Than $1050‘.

Trip Planning Resources

We have been using a couple resources to plan this trip. There are so many places to reference nowadays, between the internet, and traditional, hard print books. We ordered a couple Costa Rica travel guides (Frommer’s and Lonely Planet) off thriftbook.com for less than $4/book (a great resource for all book types).

Because we are budget trip planners, we referenced several websites during the course of securing our accommodations, including Airbnb. For the first time, we explored Bookings.com and it ended up being the best tool for what we were searching for on this trip! Better yet, we booked our accommodations on Bookings.com via Ibotta (referral code hpkyhkm for some free $$) for even more perks (in the form of cash back). Who doesn’t love cash back? We also used a cash back credit card to pay for most of the trip (ie. MORE cash back 😉

We were recently referred to Pinterest as a trip planning tool as well. We have to say, it isn’t a bad idea! If you aren’t familiar, Pinterest is essentially an online storage platform for all those ideas you clipped out of the digital magazine (aka the internet). It’s a great way to store all the trip tips, tricks and ideas you stumble across while browsing the net. Here’s our Costa Rica board.

And have you ever heard of Trello? It’s a sharable ‘to do list’ app with multi user access and easy to use configuration, making it the perfect trip planning tool! You can generate lists for each stage of your trip planning like we did here. Our lists are ‘To Do’, ‘In Process’, and ‘Done!’ We even added an ‘Itinerary’ list to lay our day to day plans in one place.

8 Day Costa Rica Itinerary

So, how do we plan to spend our week you ask? Here is the 8 day Costa Rica itinerary, breakdown day by day. Along with a map detailing the trip layout.

Post-trip Update: Below you’ll find an up to date itinerary with the parts we didn’t get to stricken through, with a quick explanation on why we didn’t get to it. Overall, we pretty much nailed the itinerary which was a pleasant surprise! Be sure to check out each of the links for a full break down of each day).

See Also

8 Days in Costa Rica - 5 Family-Friendly Itinerary Ideas

Day 1

On the first day, we’ll fly into San Jose, a three hour flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Once we arrive, we’ll coordinate with Adobe Rental Cars to pick up our 4 wheel drive vehicle. Then, we’re heading west, out of the city. Our first real stop will be at Carara National Park. The park is open 7am-4pm daily and entrance to the park is $10 pp. (We didn’t make it to Carara National Park due to our flight being delayed as well as a hold up with our luggage. It would have been doable had we arrived into town earlier). Next, we’ll head south to Quepos for the night.

Day 2

On the second day, we’ll spend most of the day wandering Manuel Antonio State Park “the jewel of the Pacific Coast that is home to one of the top beaches in the world”. The park is open 7am-4pm daily (except Mondays) and entrance to the park is $16 pp. After a day of exploring wildlife, we’ll drive to Santa Elana for the night.

Day 3

On the third day, we’ll be exploring Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve. (Unfortunately, when we arrived at the gate, the park was randomly closed for the day. There was a police officer minding the gate and we couldn’t figure out what the deal was. We explored Santa Elana Reserve instead. We also squeezed in a chocolate, coffee and sugar tour as well). Then, we’ll make our way to the Pacific coast where we plan to stay in Tamarindo for the night.

Day 4

Our fourth day in a designated ‘Beach Day’! We plan to take it easy and get a little R&R, chilling out on the sand. Later, we’ll head to Liberia (a ‘layover town’) for the night.

Day 5

On the fifth day, we plan to explore Rincon de la Vieja National Park in the morning. The name of this park translates to ‘the old woman’s corner’ and is home to Los Pailas, a collection of boiling mud pots, steam vents and mini-geysers. We’ll spend the afternoon making our way to La Fortuna for the night, checking out hot springs along the way.

Day 6

The sixth day will be a busy one with a visit to Arenal National Park (aka THE volcano), and hopefully (time permitting) La Fortuna Waterfall. Later that day, we’ll make the long drive to the Atlantic coast and Cahuita for the night.

Day 7

Our seventh day is another designated ‘Beach Day’! Today, we aren’t driving ANYWHERE and will only be exploring the local culture. We plan to chill in Cahuita and will stay there a second night, also, our last night 🙁

Day 8

The eighth day will be an early one as we need to head back to San Jose to return our rental car and fly back to the US.

Preparing to Travel to Costa Rica

Before we make our way to the airport, we’ve got a couple more bases to cover in preparation for the trip. We plan to invest in health insurance, being that we will be travelling internationally.

The research we have done to date suggests that we wait until we arrive in Costa Rica to purchase money. For the most part, it sounds like we will be able to use our credit cards to get by (and collect point ;), but we plan to purchase some local currency to have on hand, just in case. (Plus their money looks really cool!)

As far a packing for the trip, we’ll be relying on our ‘What to Pack for a Trip to the Caribbean‘ post. Stay tuned for our post trip, day by day summary of our trip and whether we stuck to our 8 day Costa Rica itinerary. We’ll also include tips and tricks to either mimic or get more out of the itinerary we designed. Ready to dive in? Get started here.

Have you ever used Pinterest or Trello when planning a trip? What are your go-to trip planning resources?

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