We have a second home in Costa Rica and we tend to go there about three a year, more often than we thought we would#. The average cost per week to rent a larger sized SUV is about $700 and we tend to stay 2 – 3 weeks each trip, so it adds up. Then we have to consider the costs of two flights for another $1,600. It is beginning to get a bit expensive. So after numerous discussions we have decided that we need to take one of our vehicles to our home and leave in Costa Rica. While we are at it, we might as well take down a ATV and some household items that we can get more readily in here at home.
So now that we made that decision, we had to determine the {ost cost effective way to make it happen. After meeting with our attorney Ana Vargas, a wonderful woman and phenomenal professional, we were able to determine that it will cost us just over $6,000 to get our vehicle into the country and make it legal. Essentially, the majority of the costs is the import tax. We also have to set up a new Costa Rican corporation which will own the vehicle.
Armed with a cost estimate to get the vehicle into Costa Rica, we now have to determine how we are going to get it there. We have a couple options, drive it down or ship it via seacan. We have obtained one quote, which estimates the shipping costs to Costa Rica to be between $7,000 and $8,000 depending where we ship if from (Calgary or Vancouver). Shipping also means we still need our flights to Costa Rica, a rental car for a week and still have to incur the costs for the import taxes. This brings our estimated shipping journey to Costa Rica to about $16,000.
We made some rough calculations of what we figure it would cost us to drive down and pay the import taxes etc to be approximately $10,000+ a substantial cost savings compared to shipping. But driving will mean dealing with other issues we won’t have to deal with if we ship. Examples would be the language barrier as we are not fluent in Spanish (yet), travelling through Countries we know very little about etc.
The long and short of it, we have decided to drive down to Costa Rica rather than ship. The cost savings are just to substantial to ignore. As well, we are looking forward to seeing the other wonderful countries we have never been to before, yet hear such phenomenal things about. We are going to study Spanish diligently, research the political climate and news feeds relating to the other countries and most importantly….we have created a blog on our Costa Rica website to share information with others and hopefull others will share with us. With a little luck we may even find other people who are also traveling to Costa Rica or in that general direction, and would be be interested in driving together – safety in numbers. With even more luck, we would be able to have a couple people who are fluent in Spanish and communicate with the locals (and border crossings) with ease, making the trip less stressful for all of us and those whom are trying to figure out what the heck we are trying to say.
With all the doggone snow we have gotten as of late I am stuck inside , fortunately there is the internet, thanks for giving me something to do.