What does San Jose, Costa Rica look like?

Many people said the capital of Costa Rica - San Jose isn’t that attractive and there are not many things worth to check out, so I decided not to stay over night in San Jose (also because I wanted to save money 😂). BUT still made good use of time to check it out on my own eyes 👀

Table of Contents

• About San Jose

• Lesson learned about the 4-day rental Car

About San Jose

It takes 3 hour drive from La Fortuna to San Jose. I departed earlier to have some buffer time to check out some parts of San Jose, return the car near Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) and fly to Rio de Janiero (GIG).

The first thing I did when I arrived in San Jose is to check if they have boba and decided the lunch from there. 🤭 Even though the boba I got didn’t meet my expectation, it still satisfied my sweets craving.

Chinatown is where I got the boba and had lunch. I remembered I was quite surprised to learn there’s a Chinatown and even more surprised to see a Confucius Statue there. Because San Jose isn’t that big (with 330,000 residents) and my impression is that ethnic Chinese usually form communities in big cities like New York. But I guess the more travel experience I have, the more I learn on the way.

There were quite a lot cars when I was there around 13:00. I guess people were out for lunch and also the roads are not that wide. It’s definitely easier to park somewhere and walk. My thoughts about the capital is that it seems not having much to see. (but I might be biased since I only visited one area) It is that kind of city that I probably wouldn’t visit again unless I have to take a flight from there.

Lesson learned about the 4-day rental Car

I definitely recommend you to rent a new car if you are able to check which year the car is produced. I said so because I got an old Toyota Yaris Automatic when I picked up at the airport, which initially I thought it’s fine but it turned out to be not! Here are the situations I bumped into:

1. I picked up the car at Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport (LIR) (around Tamarindo) and on the way driving to Tamarindo, the engine kept making big sounds, which made me worried

2. Needless to say using that car driving to Pocosol Biological Station from La Fortuna, where you’ll bump into many foot size sharp stones 😬

3. And while driving to the Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO), the steering wheel was locked for 5 seconds for 2 times, which is super dangerous 😬😬

At the last few hours, I only wanted to return the car as soon as possible in case I bump into trouble and couldn’t fly as scheduled. Fortunately, nothing happened in the end. After that, I checked the receipt and found out the car I picked up didn’t match with the photo on the receipt. Lesson learned is that next time if a car didn’t match with the photo, especially when it looks old, I should ask for the possibility to switch to a new one 😤