Irish Drifter wrote:
TheMadGerman wrote:
Honestly, I don't bother with the public buses. Grey Line offers transportation for about $25-30 anywhere in the country, and you don't have to put up with all the stops.
Depends on what kind of experience you are looking for. Want to be with a group of tourists then Grey Line is a relatively inexpensive option to get you there. Want to absorb some local culture and mingle with every day Ticos? Then a public bus, with all the inconveniences, is your best choice.
TheMadGerman wrote:
Quote:
just took the bus to LaFortuna Tuesday. $3.50 4 and 1/2 hours with a stop in San Carlos for food/bathroom.
4 and 1/2 hours? It's a 2 1/2 hour trip. Wow.
MadGerman,
You can travel anyway you want, but don't mock those who have different preferences than you. There is no one right one size fits all answer here. And your "arguments" are very misleading and exaggerated in cynical self-serving attempt to support your own personal preference. The reality is not nearly as extreme as you make it out to be.
For one thing, the Grayline shuttle fares may start out at "only" $25 like you said for their shortest routes (such as to Jaco) but they actually run as high as $43 not $30 elsewhere in CR and their fare from SJ to Fortuna is actually $33 each way (Interbus is $35). As stated by ID and others, the public bus fares rarely run as much as $10 and are often less than $5. One could argue how consequential the ~$30 cost differential between Grayline and the public buses are on the SJ-Arenal route. IMHO, $30 may not be a helluva lot but it is enough to not be so casually dismissed (e.g. it is well over the cost of a full hour session at someplace like Oasis). What it comes down to is what are the other tradeoffs (pro and con) and how all those add up for each individual. So lets look at some of them.
You next misleading statement is that "you don't have to put up with all the stops" on the shuttle. You know very well that is not strictly true. The reality is that you're really trading one type of stops for another. With the tourist shuttles, you get picked up and dropped off at your hotel, but so does everyone else. This means you can make plenty of stops picking up and dropping off your fellow passengers at either end of your journey as you wind your way around the city to their various hotels. It is also not unusual to wind up having to wait for some inconsiderate asshole who is not ready for their pickup. Public buses make stops, but there are local buses and their are direct buses. The locals make lots of stops but the direct buses make relatively few, mostly to pick up and drop off passengers on their way out of SJ or as they arrive at their destination. Okay, give the edge to the shuttle on this measure, but my point is that it is not as extreme as you suggested.
Next, you exaggerate the time difference between shuttles and buses. The listed public bus trip duration is 4 hours not 4.5 and the duration listed for Interbus is 3-3.25 hours not 2.5. Grayline's website does not reveal its trip times but presumably they should not be much different from Interbus. That cuts the travel time differential that you suggested in half or less than one hour for the SJ-Arenal trip. And that hour is basically a reflection of the stops mentioned above. Personally, when I'm on vacation and not in any great rush, one hour here are there is not that big a deal. what is more important to you saving an hour and paying $35 for a trip or taking an hour longer and saving $30 of that money to spend on something else, particularly if you prefer the ambiance of that slower ride anyway.
Which brings me to my last point, those intangible aspects that ID pointed out, whether you want to travel with tourists or ticos. Like he so fairly pointed out, the "best" choice comes down to one's
personally preferred style of travel.
I'll throw out yet one other factor that might be the critical one for some people. Grayline leaves at either 9AM or 4:45PM. If you're going with a chica, making that 9AM departure on time might be a little difficult, but waiting until nearly the end of the afternoon for their next shuttle may not be so desirable either (you'll miss all the scenery once the sunsets and you'll be travelling over dinnertime). Interbus offers an even earlier 8:15AM departure and a midafternoon departure at 2:30PM. Do you pay $2 extra so you can get there 45minutes earlier or is making that departure after a night of debauchery even more difficult than 9AM? OTOH, a 2:30PM departure is late enough to squeeze in a daytime MP session before your trip and yet still get to Arenal before sunset.
Finally there is the public bus. It has an even earlier departure of 6:15 for anyone crazy enough to get up at that hour, but that puts you into Fortuna early enough that you could even get in 4 hours of hotspringing or whatever and still make the last bus back to SJ that same day (not that I'm recommending that). Alternatively they have an 8:30AM departure that puts you into Fortuna about 1hour after the Interbus shuttle and not that much after the Grayline Shuttle making the time differential with Grayline seem even less significant. And finally they have an 11:30AM departure, which may be best for those late sleepers among us since it gets to Fortuna earlier than either of Graylines or Interbuses PM departures. Basically, cost, # of stops and length of trip are important but not the only things to consider and different approaches may work best for different people at different times.
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