Pets
Import health requirements for dogs and cats
Dogs and cats entering Costa Rica must have a health certificate issued by a licensed veterinarian, and endorsed by a Veterinary Service (VS) veterinarian. The examination for the certificate must be conducted within the two weeks prior to travel to Costa Rica.
Health Certificate Statements
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The dog/cat was examined and found to be healthy and free of any clinical signs of infectious disease.
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The animals were vaccinated against distemper, hepatitis, leptospirosis and parvovirus.
Vaccination Requirements
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distemper
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hepatitis
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leptospirosis
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parvovirus.
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rabies – for animals 4 months or older
Requirement
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The examination for the certificate must be conducted within the two weeks prior to travel to Costa Rica.
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Please use a State of Federal US Interstate and International Certificate for Small Animals.
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Enclose rabies vaccination certificate.
Note
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The Health Certificate does NOT need to be signed by a Notary Public, nor does it have to be authenticated by the Consulate of Costa Rica.
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Animals exported in commercial lot numbers must be accompanied by an import permit.
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Goldfish are not required to have health certificates.
AIRFARE 101: How Do I Get the Best Airfare?
Cheapest Airfares Might Be on Airlines' Own Websites By The Associated Press 09/12/12
By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ, NEW YORK -- Some airlines are making travelers work harder to land the best deal. Carriers are offering more deals to passengers who book flights directly on their websites. It's an effort to steer people away from online travel agencies such as Expedia (EXPE), Orbitz (OWW) and Travelocity, which charge the airlines commissions of roughly $10 to $25 a ticket.So while travelers can save money, they must do without the convenience of one-stop shopping.
Frontier Airlines (RJET) is the latest carrier to jump into the fight, announcing Wednesday that it will penalize passengers who don't book directly with the airline. Those fliers won't be able to get seat assignments until check-in. And they'll pay more in fees while earning half as many frequent flier miles. "Particularly for families, it provides an incentive to book directly," said Daniel Shurz, Frontier's senior vice president, commercial. "There is no logical reason for our customers to want to book anywhere else."
Contracts with the online travel agencies prohibit airlines from offering lower fares on their sites. Instead, airlines such as JetBlue (JBLU), Spirit Airlines (SAVE) and Virgin America often provide discount codes in emails to their frequent fliers or through Facebook and Twitter.The savings for booking directly can be significant.
Toronto-based Porter Airlines frequently offers codes that save travelers up to 50%. A recent search of flights from Chicago to Toronto for November produced an airfare of $249.61 using a code at flyporter.com. The same flights would have cost $404.38 through Travelocity.
The airlines face a delicate balance. Online travel agencies account for the lion's share of ticket sales. But the airlines want to trim the fees that eat into their profit margins.
Besides the discounts, the airlines say their sites offer passengers a better experience, providing up-to-date seat maps, details about in-flight entertainment and more seamless booking.
Henry Harteveldt, co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, said the airlines and travel sites have "a very, very dysfunctional business relationship." The travel sites treat all flights equally. Price is the only differentiator.
"The online travel agencies either won't or can't talk about how an airline might have WiFi on a plane or extra legroom seats available," he said.
The online agencies say they provide travelers with several advantages, including comparison shopping and the ability to mix and match airlines for a single trip.
"That's something you can't do on an airline's site," said Dara Khosrowshahi, president and CEO of Expedia.
Simon Bramely, vice president of transportation and lodging for Travelocity, part of Sabre Holdings, noted that "the flight is one element of the trip."He said online travel agencies can save travelers hassle and money by creating packages that include hotel rooms and car rentals.
The battle is not new. Southwest Airlines (LUV) was a pioneer in cutting out the middleman. The airline does not list its fares on third-party sites. That means travelers have to search both southwest.com and then elsewhere to compare fares. Southwest hopes fliers will never make it to another site.Most of the big carriers have remained quiet. American Airlines, part of AMR Corp., (AAMRQ) was the exception. In December 2010, American cut off Orbitz from displaying its fares and selling its tickets to protest the commissions and the failure to displays extras like seat upgrades. The site had been selling about 3% of the airline's overall tickets. Expedia joined the fight by making American's fares harder to find. All sides eventually settled their disputes.
Frontier, part of Republic Airways Holdings, is making its changes specifically to cut the commissions. A four-segment itinerary -- say a round-trip flight from Sioux Falls, S.D., to Phoenix connecting in Denver each way -- booked directly through Frontier costs the airline $1.60 to process. That same itinerary booked through an online travel agent costs Frontier $20 to $26, depending on which website the ticket is booked on, according to Shurz.
Those commissions add up: Shurz said Frontier spends about $55 million to $60 million annually on distribution fees. In the first half of 2012, 42% of Frontier's $713 million in revenue came through tickets sold directly with the airline. Shurz hopes to increase that figure to 65 percent in a few years, cutting expenses in the process.Frontier's customers have a big incentive to book directly.
Only those going through the airline's website will get to pick their seats in advance. Travelers booking through third-party websites will only get half the frequent flier miles. Fees for changing itineraries, going standby, traveling as an unaccompanied minor or bringing a pet onboard will be $50 higher for those booking elsewhere.
Frontier is a low-cost carrier based in Denver. It flies to 80 destinations in the United States, many smaller cities, as well as leisure destinations such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Through August, it carried 9.1 million passengers. In that same period, United Continental Holdings (UAL) carried 96.1 million passengers. In a related move to increase loyalty, Frontier is lowering the amount of frequent flier miles needed for a free flight by 5,000. The airline also changed its website URL to flyfrontier.com.About the only thing not changing are baggage fees: They will remain $20 for each of the first two checked bags regardless of where you buy a ticket.AP Airlines Writer Samantha Bomkamp contributed to this report.
When to Fly—Season
Presumably, not all of you decide the time of year to travel based on travel costs, but many do. And unlike day-to-day price changes, airfare seasonality is fairly predictable.
Within North America—domestic U.S., Canada, and the nearby Caribbean/Mexico/Costa Rican areas—your main objective is to avoid times when fares peak.
And those times are about what you'd expect:
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Airfares from northern areas to sun-sand-surf destinations generally peak from January through March, with lowest available levels at somewhere around 50% higher than at other times. You find good deals just about any other times.
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Lowest available fares on these and most other routes show a somewhat less pronounced summer-season peak in June-July-August.
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Lowest fares to "family" destinations are generally when schools are in session.
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Available fares just about everywhere peak sharply—often around double—surrounding the Christmas-New Year-Hanukkah holiday season. You find similar peaking on many routes around Thanksgiving.
Lowest available fares are generally good for travel on the days of major holidays and for intermediate days of three-day weekends and week-long holiday periods. Of course, there's a reason: Not many of you want to fly the Friday after Thanksgiving or on Christmas Day.
At other times, fares seem to fluctuate more randomly, although fares in the fourth quarter—Labor Day through mid-December, except for the Thanksgiving peak—are usually the year's lowest.
To the Southern hemisphere, Southern South America the summer and year-end holiday peak periods coincide, so fares are generally lower during the May-August period—somewhat lower to South America,
Researching seasonal fare variations has never been easier. Checkout www.smartertravel.com or Hotwire's TripStarter feature displays a day-by-day graph of lowest generally available airfares on hundreds of popular domestic and international routes (actual prices travelers paid through Hotwire) for the entire calendar year 2009 plus 2010 up to the current date. If you can't find the route you're considering, look at nearby major airports.
Hotwire's data are unique and uniquely valuable. Lots of government and trade sources track average airfares, but as noted above, those data are of limited use, if any. Hotwire is the only source I know for historical lowest-generally-available fare data: Some of my industry analyst friends would kill for a 10- or 20-year tabulation of these series.
Hotwire also tabulates average hotel prices for major destination cities in a similar way, and the site allows you to determine the best (or at least lowest-cost) times to visit. For example, from New York to Orlando, TripStarter says the lowest airfares are in January, September, and October; the lowest hotel rates in Orlando are in August, September, and November, so a visit in September gives you the best of both worlds.
Keep in mind that destination costs do not always parallel airfare costs.
Don't schedule a vacation for minimum airfare if that means paying top dollar when you arrive.
When to Fly—Day of Week; Hour of Day
The consensus among travel writers and self-appointed mavens seems to be that the best days for domestic travel are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Similarly, the conventional wisdom about times to fly says that you find the lowest fares on early morning, overnight red-eye, late evening, and mid-day flights.
But day-of-week and time-of-day decisions needn't be a guessing game. Many big online sites display lowest available fares for as much as plus or minus a full month around the dates you initially specify, and you can sometimes knock hundreds of dollars off by switching travel a day or two. Similarly, most sites display all the fares for all feasible itineraries during a day, so you can easily spot those that combine low fares cost with reasonable schedules.
Long Term
Just about everybody in the industry agrees that airfares almost everywhere are in a period of sustained increase. The big "legacy" airlines, say the mavens, are finally achieving discipline on "excess capacity," which means they will stop overproducing seat-miles and thus face less pressure to sell off that excess at below-cost prices.
I tend to agree with that conclusion, although competition from low-cost lines and the inevitable new startups will keep a lid on what might otherwise be a major overall price increase. And, discipline or no, you'll continue to see short-term sales at unpredictable times. (Editor's Note: SmarterTravel is a member of the TripAdvisor Media Network, an operating company of Expedia, Inc. Expedia, Inc. also owns Hotwire.)
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