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There are numerous Internet cafes in San Jose, and you’ll find a decent amount in tourist hot spots like Manuel Antonio, La Fortuna, Montezuma, or Puerto Viejo as well. San Jose probably offers the cheapest prices as there’s lots of competition- often prices are as little as US$.50 an hour. In the more isolated areas prices can be much higher, since frequently a café may have little or no competition. Today, many hotels, even low-end hostels, offer free Internet service, and Spanish language schools will often provide free service to their students.
If you happen to be traveling with your own laptop, more and more hotels, resorts, airports, cafes, are going WI-FI (wireless), becoming ‘go to’ places that provide high-speed Internet access for free or perhaps a small charge for usage.
Having web access while traveling can also save a ton of money- by NOT having to make international calls using a credit card or regular phone. You should seriously consider a broadband-based telephone service such as Skype (http://www.skype.com), which enables you to make FREE or fairly inexpensive international calls over the internet. If you have an account, you can make calls from your own laptop, or from most internet cafes. 
International calling ALERT: The name of the company that operates these, normally blue phones, WORLDWIDE is BBG Communications. This is the BIGGEST ripoff as far as international calling goes. Just to connect, it can run more than $40.00, and that’s even when you get an answering machine. That charge is just to connect and doesn’t take into account the price per minute. The beauty of this worldwide ‘scam’ is that you don’t realize it until you get back home and receive your credit card bill. These phones are in A LOT of Costa Rican hotels/motels and other places where a unsuspecting traveler may need to make an international call. The reason- the hotel gets a nice little commission check each month. We personally know hotels that get $1000.00 and up PER MONTH. So, you should give those people feedback as well, they know the phone is a RIPOFF, Don’t take our word for it – GOOGLE BBG Communications, you’ll see.
