Ten Things Tourists Don't Like About Costa Rica MUST SEE! 👀

all right guys we we got a good one we got a good one 10 reasons why tourists don't like costa rica 10 reasons maybe even maybe even the top ten reasons tourists don't like costa rica and we're gonna get to that in a minute it's gonna be good anyway guys i'm michael allen travel costa rican now.com travelcostaricanow.com is a travel agency so so why am i making this video anyway guys go to travel costa freaking out dot com fill out the four minute for me you'd be that much closer to the vacation of a lifetime we're like you having best friends who live in costa rica who know costa rica totally hooking up your costa rica vacation and i'd appreciate a subscribe youtube's tough the subscriptions thing helps me and i would appreciate it especially if you appreciate videos like these anyway guys my coffee on this one has its own chair its own chair for this video because this is important all right these are probably the top 10 reasons tourists don't like costa rica now i want to now some of these are very legit complaints very legit complaints but i want to do a little bit of clarification on some of these i want to maybe clear up some of the misconceptions on some of these as well and these are no particular order except for the first one the first one is probably the one you hear the most and there's some truth to it okay let's do it number one reason tourists don't like costa rica it's too expensive you hear it all the time oh my god costa rica is so expensive there's so many other places you can go it's so expensive though i just got back and it's so expensive you know what it can be expensive you are exactly right it can be i i would agree with that to a certain extent but you you taurus you have to take some responsibility for this because what you did if you did this yourself you went to tripadvisor you probably went to the first page of hotels that one looks good maybe airbnb or wherever you're looking you're going to you're seeing maybe a page of things and you're picking from that page you don't know the options you don't know what's cheaper you don't really know the good things to do really you think you do you think you do because you did your research but you researched maybe five things five things you don't really know and you didn't email your friends from travel now dot com the people that live here and know costa rica totally hooking up your your vacation so you have to take a little bit of responsibility a lot of you want a champagne vacation on a beer budget all right and sometimes that's not going to happen do you want to stay in five stars yes but i'm just telling you uh it doesn't have to be that expensive you make it so you go to the tourist hotspots you go to the restaurants you don't know where to go you don't know where to go so in that case yes it can be expensive and i would agree but it does it does not have to be it does not have to be all right number two number two this has been a thing uh for about 20 to 30 years and definitely for as long as i've been here for 15. renting a car in costa rica man it is it i say this all the time it is fraught with peril it's fraught with apparel man they just have this thing where i'm not going to get into it because i have so many videos about this they just the price isn't the price so when you go pick up the car it's not the price and there's a bunch of added on and it's very annoying and it can totally get your vacation started on on the wrong foot especially if you're traveling on a budget because all of a sudden you have a car on your credit card for two thousand dollar uh uh deposit you know and you didn't know this and you can't do anything about it or you're in another country try to walk try to walk out of the the uh rental car place what are you gonna do they know that they know that now luckily i have a simple fix to that um right me i have one for you transparent price good service good cars the price is the price but anyway the rental car thing is a thing down here it is real uh it is very very hard to do your own research on rental cars here man it's very very hard there's a lot of manipulated websites there's deception there's oh people saying oh this was the best car ever had you know all the made up stuff so it's it's tough it's tough so if you just want to bypass all that right me but rental cars that's number two number three this is another one i believe that is a little unfair a little unfair we're talking about food food everybody says the same thing oh rice and beans rice and beans rice and beans okay here's what's true the plate the what they kind of tend to eat every day is a variation of rice and beans it's called the casado that means marriage it's a marriage of rice and beans usually a meat usually a little bit of salad and usually a plantain so everybody's like wow that's just so bland this is no spice it's everywhere yes it's everywhere because it's their it's what they eat is what they eat but it's not all what they eat there are very talented chefs here you can go anywhere you can go in most places in costa rica that you're gonna go and find sushi good ribs nice steaks all of it peruvian thai food you know this whole thing that like the food's not here okay no one told you you have to eat rice and beans if i go to the states and i don't like mashed potatoes but your food is mashed potatoes and a meat maybe i call that blend but you say well you go down the street and you can get this food over here and you can do this but there's another thing so the casados do tend to be the cheap form of eating down here if you're traveling on a budget and it is and it can be a little bland sometimes but there's this thing called the tabasco sauce there's also one of the best um condiments ever invented is called lozano guess where that came from here in costa rica people people take bottles back of lozano it definitely can spice up your food so this whole thing about the food is yes it's their local food of rice and beans but come on man you don't have to quit quit acting like you got to eat that and actually i do like that i do have rice and beans a lot and they make really good you can find places that make really good gaio pinto the caribbean side has a lot of flavorful food down there so i'm getting tired it's one of those things where you repeat something so much the food's bland the food's planned the food's planned and everybody believes the food's bland it can be doesn't have to be and you can get any kind of food you want here all right so that's number three number four is a um bewilders me a bit uh and it's i kind of put it in this uh two things in the same category first it's rain i put rain and bugs as number four now rain is funny because do you not know costa rica is a tropical country do you know why it's so beautiful do you know why people come here do you know about the flora and fauna do you know why the sloths and the butterflies and these beautiful trees and plants exist because this perfect combination of sun and rain and all that is why you want to come here but it rains here but the thing is it's not a lot of people they go well michael i know it's a rainy season that's not a really good time it's not like during the rainy season you turn on a faucet uh march first and then don't turn off the faucet until like june 1st it's not always raining it rains more sometimes than others uh tends to start raining uh later afternoon and in the evening a lot of times the mornings are good but then different parts of the country so i made a i made a video a little bit ago and i was talking about you know they were saying a lot of rain's coming a lot of rain's coming well it did but in guanacaste it didn't i was up there sun shining every day blue sky and hot you know what i mean so yeah it's a rainy season they you know the kind of dry season but i wouldn't let that stop you necessarily because again you write people like us and i can kind of spot you around not saying it wouldn't rain not saying it wouldn't rain but i just and and you know the rain can be beautiful here and it shouldn't stop you from really doing much of anything here now the other one which is kind of strange to me too i see this a lot because i had airbnbs d'angelo has airbnbs my friends do as well and people like to complain about bugs oh my gosh you should have saw the ants on the counter i couldn't believe it it was so the house was nice it was really nice but the answer i mean that just shows you that the house must have been dirty you know it's amazing again we live in the tropics bugs love you know moisture and sun and shadows and stuff and we have a lot of them here and they're very interesting very interesting so yeah you might see a cockroach scurry across the floor now if you saw 50 cockroaches that would be a problem i think anybody would agree right but there are bugs here and they can be extremely interesting but if you're scared of bugs if you are you know you're worried about that then i guess maybe costa rica isn't really for you but there are bugs down here there are bugs and and you see some of the weirdest looking bugs ever down here we find me and d'angelo find it fascinating i mean we run into something that's crazy that you've never seen before but a lot of people that uh rent down here expect this bug-free zone or something from the house so you want monkeys and sloths out your window and you want the two cons to come by no bugs no bugs uh just quick on the bug sink because the snakes you know we have snakes down here as well if you stay where you're supposed to be your your likelihood you might see a snake uh but uh you're not really gonna have a snake problem down here unless you venture off the path if you know what i mean we have a lot of them down here and i think about 17 are are venomous but if you're doing what you're supposed to and listening to people you shouldn't have a problem with snakes so number five number five i used to i get this a lot i get this uh statement or it's i guess it's feedback i don't know what it is but people go michael i just you know i just left san jose and i couldn't believe all the barbed wire all the bars on the houses it just it's like it looks like a there's a war zone or something with you know it's everywhere well you know it is everywhere it is everywhere but just to keep this in perspective what would be the cheapest really form besides maybe a dog to protect your house so they don't have key cards they don't have security people at their front gates they don't have you know they have gated communities here sometimes but you know a lot of it is is just people personally protecting their house and the easiest and cheapest way to do that is um bars and for businesses it's bob wire and that's really the why you see it a lot is because it's the least expensive they can't have a security guard with the machine gun guarding their business every night you know they can't they just don't have it like that so i wouldn't really throw that stone too much because this is a different country than yours and you know we don't have all these gates going up and the guard asking you and key card stuff all the time so that's why you see it they want to pro they want to personally protect and the cool thing about here or the good thing is when you have the bars on your house and you can put nice bars on your house you're good you're pretty good you know somebody's going to pretty much walk right by that you know they're not going to uh they're not even going to try right so it's a nice effective way of protecting your property anyway so that's why you see a lot of barbed wire and um bars on windows here okay number six number six uh used to be close to the top reason it's it's it's really gotten better and that's driving in costa rica i still get a lot of people that are scared to drive here they've heard the stories they've seen maybe some of the older things driving can be scary here for some reasons but you know it can be scary because they got really curvy roads it can be foggy and people are walking three abreast in the street and you're like or a you know a animal can jump out type that stuff can really happen and we don't really encourage people that don't really know the roads here to drive at night but the roads themselves have gotten much better i remember we used to drive around uh the erinol lake it was man it took forever there were potholes i mean big potholes everywhere and they had a lot of that problem with a lot of roads down here they had they have done they've done a pretty good job of of upgrading their roads and especially for like the traveler of the you know going to from san jose to let's say la portuna the road's fine the road is fine uh but there are some places during the rainy season where the rainy season makes the roads bad like the like for instance the os peninsula so yes driving could be uh fraught with peril because of because of the rain but people used to the reason that costa rica got the bad rap in the beginning was the the the quality of the roads it wasn't you know the fog and and you know the other things i mentioned it was strictly the construction of the roads or lack of keeping them up i just want to tell you that that's gotten much better so the driving down here is uh roads are better but you should still be leery you know just because of all the other reasons driving can be interesting here number seven taxi drivers you know taxi drivers in my opinion deserve a special circle in dante's inferno and i think taxi drivers are kind of like this around the world i really i think they are you know uh uh i don't know man but here's a couple things to remember don't tip a taxi driver ever all right don't tip him got it uh the other thing they're not your friend the taxi driver is not your friend all right so just remember that and the other thing is if he doesn't turn on his meter get out of the car the meter the spanish word for meter here is uh maria maria if the maria is not working do not get in that car okay don't get in that car you've got to watch them taxi drivers like i said the same pretty much all over the world they're no different here i've had about in the 15 years i've lived here i've had about five altercations with taxi drivers one time i guess they didn't know i lived here and they tried to overcharge me and i actually just i refused to pay him and just gave him the money that i know how much it cost in other words he said 5 000 colonies which is the unit of money down here and i was like it's not that that's and i gave him 3 000 and just left i've gotten out of a cab uh twice when uh there was issues uh i've i've had i've just we've had a we've had a few few run-ins with the taxi drivers and i live here so i i don't you know you'll be you would be a leery of doing that i am not so i could understand you're in another country you're not going to feel comfortable with like arguing with the taxi driver or that so again don't tip they're not your friend and tell them to turn on the maria maria okay uh that was number seven number eight this one's so true this is this is probably one of the truest legitimate gripes service service here tends to suck it does i don't know they think of it as a job they don't care they're just there it's like they i gave you your food what do you care do i have to smile to do that what do i if you want a beer flag me down you want your check flag me down you know they lose so much money man especially as a prior drinker while drunk you know i you know they can make a lot of money off me if they just continue to bring me beers but you know they don't do it like that down here for the most part so the service in restaurants and bars uh some stores souvenir shops it's very it's like they you know ola you know they they it's like they don't really care now i do want to make a distinction between the service industry of restaurants bars stores souvenir shops those kind of places versus the tourism down here man you're going to get top-notch service down here whether it's your rafting guide you know whether you're zip-lining whether you know we hook you up with the private driver you're going to get people that talk english you're going to get people that you know want to pull over the car and let you take a picture of a sloth they're going to be you know they're going to be very gregarious when they're working with you like in whatever tour they are so the service industry is as far as tourism is top notch here and and maybe they deserve a tip or maybe they don't or whatever but those people are good but the when it comes to bars and restaurants and that if you find good service and remember and remember the in restaurants and bars on the receipt they have they all they add 10 anyway for a service charge which the tip so that's enough with that you don't you don't rarely need to tip any more than what's on they're going to charge you on the receipt okay number nine number nine san jose oh my god san jose is a dirty nasty city oh i can't it was so gross it's so man it's a freaking city man we're in costa rica it's like the detroit you know whatever now is there interesting is there a few if you're if you're stuck in san jose for a day or two days there's some things you can do man there's a place called barrio moon which has these big coffee oh uh coffee baron uh mansions that were converted to restaurants and there's very interesting things down there uh they do have their their museums down there that are interesting they have some walking tours you know that are that are interesting i've done these things so if you're down there you can do some things but man you don't want and and and they do have prostitution down there and you know some people never leave san jose uh because of like the prostitution but you 95 of you you know get the out of san jose right i mean let's that's not that's costa rica but that's not what you're coming to see you're not coming to see but some people are there for a day or a day and a half and there's some things to do just go down in the the um kind of the touristy part there's you know museums down there and that there's a couple interesting things but other than that you don't want to be spending a whole lot of time in san jose um number 10 also very legitimate gripe about one of the reasons tourists don't like costa rica and that is petty theft they are you know they're just they're gonna do something out of opportunity you know did you leave your laptop on your seat or your car with your car unlocked you know did you are you watching your stuff are you are you careless are you a conscientious traveler do you know what you're doing do you use common sense you would you prob you pretty much won't have a problem the chances of you hitting you know being at risk of like a strong arm you know robbery towards you is almost nil and none it can happen obviously but it normally doesn't happen everything down here is because you know maybe you kind of goofed up and you you know you left your cell phone man unfortunately um a lot of them just don't make that much money and you know they're gonna take things so but but common sense traveling lock up your stuff watch your stuff you know all that and i got a you know million videos about that those things then you'll have no problem down here no problem all right guys that was that was i think pretty much the top ten now if anybody wants to add to that list or they think i missed something please comment on it you know maybe i did miss something um i'm not saying there's not little there's not more petty beefs about you know costa rica so hey man put them in the comments i'd like to hear them i always love your feedback all right man things are going to pop up my videos you should always do your research and your homework before visiting or living anywhere and i think my videos are a good place to start anyway guys i'm michael allen travel costa rican now.com peace guys hope it helps you

Channel: Travel Costa Rica NOW

Views: 109,265

Keywords: Costa Rica, visit Costa Rica, Travel Costa Rica Now, vacation, michael alan, top 10 reasons, is Costa Rica expensive, tourism, travel tips, best travel tips, top 10 destinations, reasons tourists don't like, trip advisor, budget travel, 5 star resorts, places to go, La Fortuna, Manuel Antonio, Tamarindo, Jaco, bugs, snakes, Venomous snakes, things to do, renting a car, taxi drivers, rental cars, gallo pinto, tourists complaints

Id: y-A9ZJ4BG84

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021