Check the Local Weather and Terrain Before Booking Your Vehicle
I have never been a person who cared much about models when renting a car. Oh, is it the cheapest, has at least one working USB and a way to connect my phone to the speakers? Okay, okay, I’ll take that one, thanks.
On a recent Lifehacker trip to Costa Rica, where lead video producer Joel was the one placing the order, I was even less worried about that. But that all changed quite quickly, as soon as we left the Enterprise parking lot and entered the open road.
As Beth wrote earlier this week , we quickly discovered that most of the roads we ended up driving during the week were unpaved, dusty, and in some cases riddled with large potholes and steep hills. Oh, and there was at least one (small) river that we needed to cross.
That was a pretty big request for our little Toyota Corolla, which we booked in part because our local manufacturers had assured us that the roads were “flat” – to be honest, they never said “paved”.
Both the Corolla and Beth (who we insisted on driving) proved to be heroic, and since we arrived here during the dry season, the river we crossed really looked more like a big puddle. However, if we knew what we were getting ourselves into, we would have pushed our company to create an SUV.
The bottom line is that if you are planning to rent a car anywhere with infrastructure or unfamiliar weather, it is worth spending five minutes searching Google for things like “driving in Costa Rica”, “local roads in Iceland” or “driving. Wisconsin November Terms “to better understand if you need something heavy duty (or 4WD) or if you can really get away with it by choosing the cheapest and smallest possible model.