The official recommendation for all international flights is 2 hours. I think Chili is correct that it very rarely takes that long and you wind up waiting for a while at the gate. HOWEVER, I think his 20 minute estimate is definitely on the short side. Sure, it might only take that long, but lines that usually though not always move fairly quickly are not uncommon. As GM pointed out, Sunday IS a big return day AND SJO has a bad practice of scheduling a lot of flights around the same time, so it is certainly possible that you could run into some delays. I would err on the conservative side and get there early, though perhaps not actually full 2 hours before your departure. IMMHO, it is better to show up too early and have to wait around then to arrive there too late and discover, as your luck would have it, that one time there were long delays and then ultimately miss your flight after waiting anxiously in slow moving lines.
As for the cab thing, I'd be very surprised if it even took as long as 30 minutes to get to the airport from the SL that early on Sunday morning. If you're nervous about delays from having to find a cab that early in the morning then I'd simply speak to the front desk (or directly to your favorite driver) the day before about arranging a ride at your chosen hour.
I'd say if you leave around 7 or maybe a little later to give you time to wolf down some toast and coffee, you should be fine. If your driver is a little late (or you are), you probably won't get there a full 2 hours before but you should still have plenty of safety buffer.
BTW, if you don't have time to have a proper breakfast before your driver picks you up, here's another suggestion. The foodstalls at the airport are ridiculously overpriced (as they are at every airport). Once you've taken care of your exit stamp, checked your luggage and gotten your boarding pass, IF you have enough time left over (as you probably will) and before you go through security, go back outside the airport. There is supposed to be a pretty good soda right across the street that will be much more reasonably priced than anything you'll find back inside. If you go early, you'll have that option. If you play it too tight, you may not. Since you wouldn't be taking any time to eat breakfast before you leave SL, you probably wouldn't have to get up that much earlier to leave SL early and you'd be getting all the uncertain stuff out of the way first so that you can have a more leisurely and enjoyable breakfast.
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Never seen anything like it before.
