Our Costa Rica Pack List

February 23, 2019

Early into our relationship, I learned a key requirement for traveling with Andi: packing light. There’s no “room” (literally) for multiple pairs of shoes, dresses, and hair accessories. If it fits into the bag he’s selected for our trip, I can bring it. If not, forget about it.

I’m giving him a hard time, of course, but it is true that we’re fairly specific about the items we bring with us when we travel. The more we bring, the more we schlep around from place to place, and that gets old really quick!

One travel accessory that we’ve used & loved this past year are space-saving packing cubes for our clothes. Each person in our family has a color-coded cube and 4 of them fit perfectly in a big travel duffel. This works well on a sailboat and the RV when we have have limited storage.

As we prepared for this trip, we also kept a shared list on our phones of items to bring. This helped us remember all those extra things like charging cables, passports, carseats, sunscreen, etc.

We thought we’d share a list of those special items we brought with us to Costa Rica:

TECHNOLOGY

• Phone & computer chargers (Andi brought an organizer for these which has been convenient)

• Charging block

• Cell phone mount for the car

• Headlamp

• Workout earbuds

• Camera & camera charger

• DJI Osmo Pocket video camera

• Google Fi SIM card (more about this in another post)

• Small bluetooth speaker

GROCERY

• 4 reusable grocery bags

• Cooler for transporting food from the grocery store & from location to location

• Reusable water bottles, one for each person (insulated would have kept our water colder)

• Granola bars (I’ve been glad to have these; they don’t sell them here)

• Paring knife with travel cover

MEDICAL / TOILETRIES

• Hydrocortisone itch cream

• A small pill pack with Ibuprofen, adult Benadryl, acid reducer, motion sickness, constipation, Imodium, Excedrin, sleeping

• Children’s Tylenol

• Children’s Benedryl

• 1 bottle of Bug spray

• 4 bottles of Sunscreen (it’s really expensive to buy here)

• Hair dryer

• Hair straightener

• Make-up

• Detangling spray

• Fingernail clipper

• First-AID kit

EDUCATION

• Math & Language Arts workbooks

• 2 chapter books - Tory

• 2 easy readers - Aden

• Blank notebook for journaling

• Markers

• Small dry-erase board w/ markers (math)

CLOTHING

• Rain Jackets, one each

• Rain boots for kids

• Sunshirts, 2 for each person

• Rash guard, kids

• Board shorts w/ pockets - Andi

• Buff bandana - Heather

OTHER

• Kelty Sunshade Tent

• Photo copy of car insurance paperwork

• Photo copy of Passports

• Car seats, kids

• Life jackets, kids

• Patagonia Duffel Our primary luggage (we use for most trips) as its waterproof and easy to carry

• Amazon Carry-On wheel bag that kids can roll if they need to

Notes:

• TECH: We wish we would have brought a 12v charger. Our rental car doesn’t have a USB port so it’s impossible to charge our phones on the go without the charging block. We brought a charging cord for every device, so that every electronic could be charged at once without having to rotate them.

• We forgot Kindles - that would have been nice to have!

• BEACH: We purchased beach towels once we got here. Sunscreen and bug spray are really expensive, so we’re glad we brought some with us. Andi says he wishes we would have brought our sand-less beach blanket. We brought a beach bag which we’ve used daily.

• RENTAL CAR: Must-have, in our opinion. We noticed a huge pricing difference for the rental by picking up outside the airport terminal (but as close as two miles away). We found ALAMO to have the best pricing.

• CAR INSURANCE: If you are an American Express credit card holder, call the number on the back of your AMEX card to ask for a copy of your travel insurance coverage, and they will provide you with a letter insuring up to $70,000 in replacement. You are then able to use this insurance coverage instead of purchasing collision insurance from the rental car company and it saves you about $25 a day. The catch is, you can only use AMEX travel insurance coverage for up to 30 days, unless you upgrade to the premium service for an additional $20. No matter what, every renter is still required to purchase the mandatory Costa Rican rental car liability insurance for $15-$20/day. In summary, we’re paying $45/day for the equivalent of a Toyota 4runner which has been nice to have on the bumpy, dirt roads. You have to use that AMEX card to pay for your rental.

• MEDICAL: Pharmacies are readily available in every town, and most often there’s an English-speaking pharmacist who can help with simple treatments for sickness.

• Since we don’t speak Spanish, we downloaded Google Translate to our phones prior to coming to Costa Rica including the Spanish dictionary in Google Translate so it works without even without an internet connection.

Immigration searching our cooler. Wondering why we had two cases of Beach Bars.