Hello Sue!

Renting a car in Costa Rica can be a complicated process, especially when it comes to deciphering car rental insurance, so we’re happy to help however we can. 🙂

To confirm, we no longer provide Costa Rica car rental services through our business, so we won’t be able to secure the car for you through our website. We can certainly provide you with information that should help shed some light on the topic of car rentals in Costa Rica, however, so you feel more comfortable booking your own car. We can also offer you our free car rental discount that you’re welcome to use if/when you decide to book your own rental car directly through the car rental agency we use most often. The discount is the same that we used to use years ago when we would reserve rental cars on behalf of travelers. Today, though we no longer handle car rental bookings directly (unfortunately we’re just too busy with all of the other Costa Rica-related projects on our plates to handle these bookings!), we’ve opted to make access to our car rental discount public so all travelers can save money on their vacation transportation.

To begin with some resources, you may be interested in reading the related articles we wrote on our blog to directly answer some of the questions you have. The first one linked to below should help you better understand car rental insurance in Costa Rica so you feel more confident selecting your preferred insurance option(s) through a car rental agency’s website:

Costa Rica Car Rental Insurance Information: https://costaricatravelblog.com/costa-rica-car-rental-insurance/

This article too should help you avoid some common car rental problems in Costa Rica:

How Not To Fall For Costa Rica Car Rental Scams: https://costaricatravelblog.com/car-rental-scams-costa-rica/

If you’re not sure whether or not you should rent a car in Costa Rica for your trip, this article can help you decide either way:

Renting A Car In Costa Rica: Should You Do It? https://costaricatravelblog.com/renting-a-car-in-costa-rica/

As for our free Costa Rica car rental discount, this is provided on our Free Costa Rica Discounts page which you can find on our blog here: https://costaricatravelblog.com/free-costa-rica-discount-codes/

If you’d like to learn more about the specific car rental agency we choose to rent through most often, please see this article:

This Is The Costa Rica Car Rental Company We Rent Cars Through: https://costaricatravelblog.com/our-preferred-costa-rica-car-rental-agency/

As for whether or not you need an SUV (assuming you mean an SUV that’s a 4×4 vehicle) or not, this will depend entirely on where you plan to travel in the country and when you plan to visit. In general, travel to/from/around Playa Hermosa (Guanacaste), La Fortuna, and Puerto Viejo doesn’t require a 4×4 vehicle as most roads in these areas are paved. Monteverde is a mountainous destination so having a 4×4 vehicle while there is recommended. However, given recent and ongoing roadwork in the Monteverde area, routes into and out of the destination aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be. If you absolutely had to drive to/from the area in a non-4×4 vehicle you could (assuming you drove slow over bumpy patches), but I’d still recommend having a 4×4 vehicle to be safe. Since Tortuguero is a road-free destination that’s only accessible by boat or plane, you won’t need to worry about driving to/from this area. For the most part, the roads that lead to/from the boat docks (where boats to Tortuguero depart) don’t require a 4×4 vehicle.

As a side note, if you plan to visit during the wet/green season (typically May through mid-December for the majority of the country), I’d recommend renting a 4×4 vehicle. Large bouts of rain can cause problems on roads that are typically easy to drive when it’s dry, so it’s best to plan for the worst during the wet/green season by having a 4×4 vehicle.

Pura vida! 🙂