Costa Rica

Here are a few tips for sending and receiving mail from Costa Rica:

Sending Mail: 

• You'll find post offices in nearly every city and small town in Costa Rica.  As a general rule, the farther you are from San José, the longer the delivery time. However, most post offices in the Central Valley have delivery/receiving times comparable to the San José post office.
  
  

• If you are sending a package and it is less than two kilograms (roughly 4 pounds), you can mail it with confidence from any Costa Rican post office.  Depending on delivery location, it will take anywhere from one to four weeks to arrive.
  
  
• For roughly ₡500 colones ($1) more, you can send letters or packages "certificado", or certified, requiring the receiver to sign upon delivery.
  
  
• "Servicio Express", or Express Service, costs about ₡300-400 colones more and speeds up delivery time by three days.
  
  

• Any package weighing more than two kilograms can still be mailed from a local post office, but it will have to go through Costa Rican customs, or Aduanas. The customs agents will open the package, sort through it and label the contents before re-sealing it and sending it on its way. This process can easily add an additional two to three weeks to the delivery time and may result in an odd missing item.
   

• As a rule, you can rely on your hotel to post your letters for you, even when you're traveling in the boondocks.
  
  
• EMS Courier Service is available at most post offices and is comparable to UPS or DHL. Packages can be tracked online and arrive to most destinations in three days or more. It is pricey, at $19 US dollars (minimum price) for a 100 gram envelope, up to $188 US dollars for a 30 kg package.

Receiving Mail: 

• General Delivery at any post office in the country will hold a letter addressed to you for a month at a cost of ten cents per letter. Some post office branches do not charge for this service.
  
  

• You can also receive packages that weigh less than two kilograms care of General Delivery at a local post office.   

• Important:  You'll need your passport to retrieve your mail from General Delivery. Tell your friends to address letters to the name that appears on your passport. The postal people will not hand a letter over to you if it is addressed to somebody else.
  
  
• P. O. Boxes: For the cost of 9,900 colones for the first year (roughly $20 US) you can open your own post office box. Each additional year costs about 1,800 colones ($3.50 US) to maintain.

Below are some examples of rates and delivery times. 

517 colones= 1 US dollar (January 2007)