www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Fellas,

I am not going to be able to make the big celebration, but I am ready to make my first trip back since *2003*. I'm planning for October 16-26, since I have two events in LA before and after. Yow! I had a flight for $350 then, now I can't find a flight out of LAX or SFO for less than $580. Any ideas?

Loafie

prayer or a sacrifice to the airfare matrix God/Demon

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Loafie: I was just on Deltas' site a couple hours ago. Said something about an expansion sale for flights out of LAX. One destination was San Jose, CR and I think it was under $400. That's Cheap.

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My life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...." MAN....WHAT A RIDE!!!!"

Thanks Bad American, but I just tried Delta after your msg and got $598. Yow!

Loafie

Go to Orbitz and at the bottom of the quick search box click "flexible dates". I pulled up LAX-SJO on American for your dates for $475 plus tax = $558. Direct from AA.com the total is $ 547.

Berk........

i still get a big kick out of reading about airfares. is 200 to 300 more going to break you i know if someone gave me $200 to $300 it is not going to change my life airfares are going to remain high, cost of fuel,labor and tsa screeners. Have a great day

Thanks Berk!

FYI, just found $552 AA on Expedia. Will keep looking.

Loafie

I agree with this on many levels. But, for me the issue is time spent in CR. I usually only go for 4 days at a time. With that said, it's costing me an extra $50+/- per day. And, being from a northern city, I always have a stopover in Miami/Dallas/Atlanta/Guatemala City..etc. Just kind of adds insult to injury. Travel to Costa Rica for me is a general pain in the ass. Therefore my new attitude about bringing "extras." No more laptop, camera, gifts, a minimum of clothes etc... Having said that, can't wait to get back!

For me it's the time spent in CR in regard to airfare price. If I were going for a few weeks or a month I wouldn't care as much.

dapanz1

Florida: Thanks for the money. Go ahead and give me the $300. In fact, leave it for me at Zona Azul.

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My life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...." MAN....WHAT A RIDE!!!!"

Totally agree that the airfares are getting way too expensive. Long gone are the days where you could fly from the west coast to asia for 500 bucks.
Hopefully, one has enuff airmiles banked for a rainy day.
Still think that airfares will start dropping one of these days, once oil gets back down to 10 bucks a barrel. :)
Later, SB

Well, if you wanna go and the price is the main factor then you will just have to replace the daily ZB and NF session with a daily 747 and Dungeon session. By the end of your trip it should balance out.

problem solved

LAX may be one of the few places in the US where fares to CR are relatively inexpensive. Or at least relative to other latin destinations not to past history. I just got my monthly e-mail from AA.com announcing their "U.S. to Central & South America Fall Sale". Again the word "sale" is used very loosely here. Their fare from LAX>SJO was $475 (basically the rate Berk & Loafie mentioned) but at least that is still cheaper than any of their other latin destinations except Lima Peru ($399 plus tax). From Miami, SJ isn't even listed as one of the cities on sale (but Liberia is at $419 - whoopie).

The reason I mention this is that you'd expect if anywhere you could get cheaper fares it would be AA's latin gateway hub in Miami. High jet fuel prices are certainly part of the high airfares throughout the land but high demand in spite of the high prices is the other part and CR is one destination that the airlines don't seem to have to discount.

Out of Miami, its cheaper to fly to not only Nicaragua & Honduras ($369 but to be expected since they are a little closer) but also Bogota, Cali or Medellin Locombia and Quito Ecuador ($329 each and they're all further away). Even Argentina is cheaper at the $399 fare I mentioned the other day.

The point isn't whether to just accept the fact that prices are going to be a couple of hundred dollars more from now on as Florida suggests but that one of the big advantages of going to CR over its southern neighbors had been its relatively cheaper fares. I'm thinking if I'm going to pay $500 anyway, I might as well go a little further for that same price or perhaps even less and explore some place different and perhaps not as over-run with mongers. Argentina has been on my to-do list for sometime (any wingmen that are interested in doing it with me drop me a line) as has Cartagena (the one major city in Colombia I haven't been to), Peru (more for non-monger reasons) and Ecuador (supposedly the up and coming monger destination that is still cheap and relatively "undiscovered")

Delta from Atlanta just increased from $583 to $607.

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PacoLoco: "You pay for it one way or another."
Ace: "Rent everything, do not buy in Costa Rica"