Many people visiting Costa Rica find themselves a little confused about the addresses or lack of them in Costa Rica. It takes a while to get used to, but they have a system that works for them.

Costa Rica is a country comprised of seven provinces: Alajuela, Cartago, Guanacaste, Heredia, Limon, Puntarenas and San Jose. Just like in the United States, one may find cities named the same in different provinces. However, since Costa Rica is a small country, approximately the size of West Virginia, one doesn’t expect cities in different provinces with the same name.

One of the cities that causes the most confusion is Playa Hermosa. It isn’t surprising that there is more than one beach named this.  The name translates to beautiful beach and almost all of the beaches in Costa Rica are beautiful. One is located in the Guanacaste province, in the northwest portion of the country. It is a lovely, protected beach that is ideal for families. The water is calm with little current. Another Playa Hermosa is located south of Jaco on the central Pacific coast, in the province of Puntarenas. This is where the 2009 Billabong ISA World Surf Games were held. This is another beautiful beach, but one with 4 – 8 foot waves. So it is always important to get the full information on where you are going.

While most individuals and businesses have a post office address, the physical address can be rather confusing. In San Jose proper, avenidas (avenues) run east and west and calles (streets) run north and south. Even here, exact addresses are a problem.

Many streets, particularly out of the center of San Jose, do not even have names. So the address is given by the distance to the nearest well known location. You will often see addresses given as 100 meters north of a hospital, 100 meters west of a bank or even 100 meters south of McDonalds. These distances are not exact, but more of an estimate. Normally 100 meters is the equivalent of a block. Occasionally, the address will reference something that no longer exists, but everyone in the country remembers. A good example of this is the Coca-Cola bottling plant. This is now the main bus station in San Jose and is a common landmark that is used. This confuses many tourists and newcomers.

United Parcel Service (UPS) and Federal Express deliver packages and letters according to these addresses, although it is sometimes challenging to get the address to fit in the space allotted. Additionally, it can be a daunting task to convince a company to ship to this type of unconventional address.

GPS’s are available and do work especially in the main cities and tourist locations. Here again you search for a specific location, such as a hotel, as opposed to an address.