Travel hacking is something I have written about in the past. It's one of the things that makes our travel more affordable and allows us to travel more widely.
Our recent trip to Costa Rica is a good example. We were returning for dental work for Alan. Our last trip to San Jose in 2014, in fact, all of our trips to Costa Rica, have centered on dental work for him. Returning to the Prisma Dental Clinic in San Jose, Alan spent only 2 short days in the dental chair. The impetus again was the huge savings offered. In the U.S., the work was quoted at $7000. In Costa Rica, we paid $2100.
As we've done many times in the past, we used JetBlue air miles for the flight. IHG hotel points covered our first 2 nights at a Holiday Inn in San Jose. We now had a one-week break for exploring, as the lab created the required 4-tooth partial plate.
On a previous trip, we had visited along the southwest coast and explored the Manuel Antonio National Park and nearby areas. While our experience there was great, except for the awful traffic, we wanted to explore a different area and focused our research on the little village of Uvita, about an hour south of Manuel Antonio.
Keeping in mind the budget aspect of the trip and the desire not to drive in the country, after Alan's initial
dental work was completed, we took the Tracopa bus from San Jose to the beachside town. At $18 per person, the ride on an air-conditioned, clean bus is quite a bargain. After the 4 1/2-hour ride, upon our arrival at the bus station in Uvita, we walked first to the nearby Sibu Restaurant and Coffee Store to refuel. Walking back to the bus station, we wandered into the conveniently located Uvita Visitor Information Center. After getting some general info about the area, they kindly called a taxi for us. The 4 km ride to our accommodations was $12, and now we had the all-important taxi contact.
Utilizing Marriott points for 4 nights, we stayed in a 2-bedroom, 2-bath home with a pool, a quarter-mile walk to the beach, Playa Chaman. La Choza De Alejo, a highly-rated (deservedly so) Mexican restaurant, was a couple of hundred feet from our doorstep, and the Maxi Pali grocery store was right around the corner from us. It rained a bit every day, but that never interfered with our low-key aspirations.
The kindness of strangers has frequently been a recurring theme in our travels. When our scheduled bus for the return trip to San Jose was running about 2 hours late, I was questioning every bus driver that stopped. A local, who was making the same trip, interceded to let me know that it was not unusual and we would not be left stranded in Uvita. But, she then further stepped in to contact the taxi driver we had booked to meet us on our return to San Jose. When our original driver was unable to pick us up due to the delay, she further negotiated with a taxi driver on our arrival at the bus station to get us safely and reasonably to our accommodations. We have limited Spanish skills, and her intervention saved us a lot of stress (and money).
Upon our return to San Jose, for the remainder of our stay, we paid $94 per night (including an extensive free breakfast) for a small one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen, located a half-mile from the dental clinic. We continued to keep a low pace. Since we were staying near the La Sabana Park, it provided the bulk of our amusement. On the Sunday we visited, we walked around the park to watch a variety of competitions. A women's and men's volleyball tournament had drawn a large crowd, and we moved around the courts to cheer them on. Soccer, running, baseball, and tennis were also taking place simultaneously around the 177-acre park. The free-entry Museum of Costa Rican Art is also located in the park and is definitely worth a visit.
