Hello CRAB!

Thank you so much for your interest in DIY Costa Rica!

That sounds like a great plan! Fortunately, the highways and roads that connect the destinations you plan to visit are paved and not too difficult to drive, so you don’t need to rely on domestic flights to get around, unless you wish to, of course! Though lots of different factors (from the weather and traffic to road construction and street protests) can affect the approximate drive time of each route, here are some estimates:

San Jose (downtown, not the SJO Airport) to Manuel Antonio: roughly 3 hours, assuming you take the route via Highway 34
Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna (downtown): roughly 4.5-5 hours, assuming you take the route through San Ramon (Road 702)
La Fortuna (downtown) to Manzanillo: roughly 5-5.5 hours, assuming you take the route via Highway 4 and Highway 32
Manzanillo to San Jose (downtown): roughly 4.5 hours, assuming you take the route via Highway 32

In case you’re looking for the approximate drive times of other routes, don’t miss my related blog post “Driving In Costa Rica: Distance And Duration Of Popular Routes”:

Driving In Costa Rica: Distance And Duration Of Popular Routes

Pura vida! 🙂

Hello Jacek!

Great question! We’ve got an entire blog post that answers it. 🙂 Here’s a link to where you can find the article, which is titled “This Is The Costa Rica Car Rental Agency We Rent Cars Through”: https://costaricatravelblog.com/our-preferred-costa-rica-car-rental-agency/

Pura vida!

Hello Jfalco!

Thank you so much for your kind comments! 🙂

I’m happy to help. Currently, Mapache’s website is not designed to accept promo codes. For this reason, we explain on the discount code page (under the “How to apply the Mapache Car Rental discount code” section) that in order to apply the discount code with Mapache, the car rental reservation needs to be arranged with Mapache via email (customerservice@mapache.co.cr). All you need to do is provide them with our discount code in your email correspondence and they’ll apply our free discount to your rental. If you’re looking for rental quotes only, you can simply explain that to them in your email, making sure to provide them with our discount code in your message, and they’ll respond with rental quotes that reflect our discount.

Quick question about your reference to a $200 waiver: I’m not sure which waiver you’re referring to here. Do you mean the mandatory rental insurance?

Until soon!