We took a trip to Costa Rica for 10 days this December 2011. The editors for GroupTrav are well known to spend practically as much time researching a trip as actually enjoying it. One of the things we debated was whether to rent a car or rely on organized transfers while on vacation. Numerous reviews told people to rely on transfers because the roads were so bad. Now, we've driven on bad roads before, but there were also warnings about crooked cops and sketchy rental agencies. So, we opted to rely on transfers.
What did we find? We should have rented a car, at least for some of it. We found most of the roads to be in great shape. We drove from Liberia to Papagayo gulf to Monteverde to Arenal/La Fortuna to Tamarindo. The only place where the roads weren't beautifully paved was coming in and out of Monteverde (and oh, they were horrendous there). We met scores of other tourists from the US, Canada, and elsewhere who were driving rental cars, even into Monteverde, with no hassle or worry. A car would have been particularly useful in La Fortuna where some of the nicer resorts are a drive from town and taking a cab means paying for it to drive to you from town plus the fare to your location (basically $10 'flag drop' for those of you that take cabs often).
The other observation we made was that, while the tourism industry is alive and well in Costa Rica, it is not so overdeveloped as to encourage extortion. We felt that most everyone we dealt with were quite honest and fair. It seems absurd that there may be widespread police corruption or rental agency tricks. We suggest ignoring the reviews that warn of bad roads, at least in these areas. They must be based on old information.
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