Currency and Tipping in Costa Rica

The currency of Costa Rica is the Colón and the symbol is ₡ / CRC. There are approximately 540 Colones per US $ at present (e.g., a Colon is worth less than 1/5th of a penny), but practically speaking it’s possible to travel to Costa Rica and pay entirely in US $. Most restaurants / stores use both currencies interchangeably and you can pay in either (or possibly receive change in $ after paying the check in ₡).

That said, there are a number of impractical things about paying for things in Costa Rica. First and foremost, tipping is ubiquitous within the tourism industry and tour guides/drivers/etc don’t take Visa or Venmo. So we’ve been scrambling to maintain a supply of 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 ₡ bills (or US $1/5/10s), but the volume of tips makes this challenging. It is important to support the people who are actually serving us, but it would be So Much Better if they got paid by the actual price of our tickets and not from additional “voluntary” tips at the end… or at least take Venmo! We can’t keep the right mix of bills in our wallets! 

Secondly, all the prices have too many zeroes. To estimate $ prices, it’s easiest to divide the listed ₡ price by 1,000 and then multiply by two. But that math can get confusing if you’re ordering multiple items in Spanish… 

These two annoyance factors are partially offset by the beauty of the Costa Rican currency. Every denomination is a different color with a different size and a picture of a Costa Rican animal on one side and a famous person on the other. We plan to bring many thousands of ₡ home as souvenirs…potentially as much as $10 worth!!!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Costa Rica: Our Favorites -- Pura Vida!

Image
Our family had a wonderful and educational trip to Costa Rica, complete with an incredible variety of adventurous outdoor activities, animal sightings and cultural immersion. We recognize that we were only tourists, but we were able to show our kids many of the contrasts of life in Costa Rica vs their home in California and we were able to give them a taste of what life is like for people in other countries.  As part of our family retrospective, we tabulated the favorite activities, places and hotels for each family member -- potentially as a source of inspiration for others considering a visit to the country. Favorite Activities : Our top two activities were the Brisa Elegante pirate ship voyage where we saw humpback whales and walked the plank on our way to go snorkeling (everyone's top activity except Lorelei's) and the Venado Caves, where we went spelunking under a waterfall and saw alien-looking scorpion spiders. Waterfall rappelling and speed boat snorkeling came in third
Read more

Ziplining like Superman and Swinging like Tarzan (By Elliott)

Image
Hey, it’s Elliott, and I am going to tell you how fun it is to zip line. I know that I already did a post about zip lining, but I had to do this one too because it was way better and I got some good videos with my go-pro. Half of the videos are mine, and half of them are Dad’s because he is obsessed with videos and pictures. Anyways, I liked this zip line better because there was more zip lines and they were longer. They were a bit slower than the other zip lines, but that was good because I got better videos with my go-pro. Some Videos of our Ziplining: Elliott and Lorelei on the Superman Zipline Dad on the Superman Zipline The Entire Family On a Zipline Dad on the Tarzan Swing There were also other thing that were not just zip lines, like a Tarzan Swing. The Tarzan Swing was just what it sounds like: a Tarzan Swing. Basically, it is a rope that you hold on to and there is a guy that pushes you. The very beginning is SOOOO scary though. You just step off a very high platform and hope
Read more

Off to Costa Rica!!!

Image
We are off! Excited to begin a family adventure to the cloud forests and sloth-covered beaches of Costa Rica for the next two weeks! We hope to post here regularly (occasionally?) for family interested in our adventure — with at least two posts authored by each kid as part of their Summer journals. As a starting point, I was surprised to see that Costa Rica is in the same time zone as Utah (+1 hour from California), but the country is  almost directly South of Florida (+3 hours from California).  That explains why sunset is at 6pm and why all of our nature activities seem to have pickup times at 7am! Looks like it will be early-to-bed and early-to-rise! We just tried out the kids’ passports for the first time. Bye bye USA!
Read more