Money

Costa Rica uses Colones ₡.
600₡ is about $1 USD. Just remember 3000₡ = $5 and 6000₡ = $10

Costa Rica usually uses a period for thousands separator and a comma for decimal separator. So you will often see prices for 3.500₡ or 7.200,00₡ (“About $6” and “about $12” respectively).

Some stores will offer their own exchange rates. It is sometimes worth doing the math to decide if you should use Colones or USD (using your card should charge you in Colones and use your credit card’s exchange rate instead of the store’s exchange rate)

USD is accepted most places. Locals were somewhat suspicious about accepting bigger bills. A store clerk usually asks a manager to approve it. We recomend bringing $20 bills or smaller.

You may find some stores and taxis that don’t take USD. You will have to use a card or Colones. When you land at SJO you should get $20 of Colones. That will be around 12,000. Take the 10,000 bill and tuck it away for an emergency taxi ride. Taxis are cheap and 10.000₡ should get you anywhere you need to go. There’s a place at the airport that will exchange without a fee. You can also go to a local bank to exchange (The place I went did not charge a fee and used the ‘market’ exchange rate)

Cards

In general we used a Visa card (check to see if you need to add a travel notification to your card). Also check for foreign transaction fees on your card. My Amazon Prime card didn’t require a travel notification and has no foreign transaction fee (if you have one I would use that for the most part). Maybe 1/10 vendors wouldn’t take that card so we would pay with cash in USD. They will give you change in Colones.

Most cards over there are “tap-to-pay”. So if a cashier who doesn’t speak English is motioning you to do something with your card that is probably what they mean. You may have to mime inserting your card (or swiping if your card still doesn’t use a chip).

Tipping

Tips are included in your bill at restaurants (10% flat rate). You usually do not need to sign anything. If they do ask you to sign there may be a place to add a tip (especially in more tourist-y places). Check to see if they already added a 10% tip (every time I saw a tip section 10% had already been tipped, so add any additional tip accordingly).

A sit down entree is typically around $10. Which is honestly a little expensive for Central America, but on par with Oklahoma prices. Groceries are inexpensive, we cooked about half of our meals here.