Location Transport

Shipping car to Costa Rica for use under 6 months?

I am planning an extended vacation in Costa Rica and plan on shipping my car from Miami. Near as I can tell it would be a whole lot cheaper than paying up to $1,000 per WEEK to rent a mini SUV there. I read that a tourist can ship their car into CR to use up to 6 months Duty Free. Anyone know if this is true?

Public Comments

1. It is supposed to be true for 3 months. When you get you visa extended you have to gt the car's permit extended as well. IT is supposed to be recorded in your passport that the car came into the country and is going out by a certain date. You are setting yourself up for many miserable days dealing with migration and the local tax authority- don't do it. You are probably better off buying a good used car for six months with all the legal fees and insurance and then selling it for a reasonable loss when you are ready to leave. Right now sales are down, prices are decent. In 6 months, who knows? but I will guess doing this will beat the cost of renting (which is a disaster in itself- rentals have special license plates which are picked on by the local transit police seeking shakedowns) or the cost and hassle of shipping your car twice. YOur can also rent a car and driver for a lot less than U$1000 a week in most of C.R. If you do not need a car everyday you can save a lot of money by renting as you go. A lot of people that do this are extralegal. THere is no provision for doing it in the law but it is not prohibited either. (Actually some of the people that do it are properly inscribed as providing the service and collect and pay a tax to do it.)
2. You can get a large SUV for about 400 a week. Insurance is a beast. It cost more to insure than to rent. Your setting yourself up for some deep @hit trying to beat the rental cost. You would be better off to buy one then sell it when you leave. They are not stupid and will see what your trying to do and do everything in their power to make your life very expensive.
3. We normally rent an SUV when we go down but we have also lined up a Car & Driver through house manager where we rent. This has proven very handy if we're doing serious partying {safe driver and all} in Brasilito or Coco Beach. We line up the rentals before we leave the states and put it on the Discover Card. The last time there the rental company tried to charge us a HUGE fee before we left but we let Discover deal with it and they straightened it right out. Make sure you video or photograph EVERY nick/scrape/ding/scratch on /in or under a rental before taking posession of it {I get the rental agent in my video} cause if you don't have proof of damage they WILL charge you with the damage and expect you to pay for it.