Friday, February 27, 2015

Rentals

When looking for a rental (in or outside of the U.S.), there are many websites you can use.  The ones I like are VRBO and AIRBNB.  I personally like Airbnb a bit better, but I use both just to compare and contrast.  I know there are many other good ones as well, like Flipkey and Home Away.  Lots of them have the same listings, so it can get redundant, but it's worth checking them all out to find the best place for the best price.  You can look at maps and pick a place based on location, or you can type in a city and plug in all your preferences and pick from that.

We're going for cheap, but close to the beach/downtown (since we'll have no car).  Turns out, we're booking pretty late (hello it's for MONDAY!) and the pickings were getting slim.  We ended up booking this one, which is cheap, but a bit far from the beach (about 7-10 minute walk).

We're staying in a city called Jaco, which is relatively large for a beach city and pretty modern and touristy.  Many would argue that Jaco isn't the place to go to get the full Costa Rican experience because it's so commercial now, but I think that'll be a great place to start our journey.  It'll be a way to really ease our way into a life of travel and living outside of the U.S.  It will be Costa Rica, but with some of the comforts we're used to.  We booked this apartment for one month, and if we like it we can book for April as well.  You definitely get a cheaper rate the longer your stay.  The price for one week almost matches the price for one month!  The price for two months was even lower, but we like keeping our options open, just in case we can find something more beach-front in April.

Our apartment comes fully furnished with everything we'll need.  It's super tiny, but it'll be perfect for the two of us.  It has air conditioning, internet, kitchen and a washer/dryer (all on our priorities list).  Since we're staying a month, we're required to pay the electric bill (most of the rentals do this) and it can be anywhere from $30 to $300 depending on how much we use the air conditioning (which will probably be A LOT).  We've been in contact with the owner through Airbnb and he seems super nice.  You pay ahead of time, but the websites pretty much ensure everything is legit.  I'm not too worried about it (I have too much other stuff to worry about).  For this apartment for 31 days, we paid $801.  Not bad, huh?  It was one of the cheapest we found, somewhat close to the beach.  It'll be very basic, but I'm sure it'll be just fine for us.  Can't wait to see it in person!

No comments:

Post a Comment