2 days ago, we arrived in Costa Rica, grateful for having crossed our last border in Central America. Crossing borders here is never particularly pleasant, and this was by far the most chaotic, annoying border we´ve dealt with so far. Our plan was to go from San Juan del Sur to Monteverde in one day, which is not a common trip or particularly easy to find information about. This is how it went:
8:00 am: Wait for a chicken bus to take us from San Juan del Sur to the Interamericana.
8:05: Barter with a taxi driver about taking a colectivo (shared cab) to the border or to the freeway.
8:10: Pick up passengers, filling out our colectivo and lowering our fare to 35 cordobas per person ($1.75)
8:45: Arrive at the Interamericana Hwy, wait on the side of the road for a bus to the border.
8:50: Colectivo pulls over and we hop in, $2 per person to the border. We pass about 100 trucks lined up before arriving at the border. The inside of the car was tricked out, it felt like we were in The Fast and the Furious.
9:15: After getting a surprisingly good exchange rate for our Cordobas and filling out immigration forms, we pass through the first gate part of the border. There are no officials or signs indicating where to go from there.
9:30: We find our way into a line to go through immigration and to have our passports stamped. We find out that we are still in Nicaragua. We talk to two different bus companies who say they are about to leave and that they have room for us.
9:50: Passports stamped (out of Nica), we wander around trying to figure out where the rest of the buses are... like, the cheap ones, and how to get to Costa Rica. There are lots of gringos walking around.
10:00: A nice Nicaraguan man selling pens tells us where to go and that the buses are cheaper on the other side of the border. We buy 2 pens for this great service. We start walking.
10:15: We find the Costa Rican border but get stuck in line behind a big busload of gringos to have our passports stamped.
10:28: We find our way through this part of the border, continue through the doors, and attempt to find a bus. The one we find is headed to Managua. We buy a water, and the sales lady tells us where to go in order to get a bus. We walk across and get a ticket for a 10:30 bus.
11:00: We pass through the bag check (the security guy waves us through, not wanting to touch our overstuffed backpacks) and get on the bus south on the Interamericana. The plan was to get off at Sardinal (at a gas station) to catch another bus to Monteverde, our first destination in Costa Rica.
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2:40 pm: Though we told our bus driver 3 times where to let us off, he still careened past the Sardinal intersection. We got the driver to pull over a few minutes later.
3:00: Hiking back along the side of the road, I see the Monteverde bus passing us.
3:10: We reach Sardinal and ask at the gas station when the next bus will come. The girl says 5:30. We buy a soda and do a cost-benefit analysis of hitchhiking.
3:30: I approach a van with TOURIST written on the side of it and ask if 1) he is going to Monteverde and 2) if he is willing to take us. He seems a bit reticent, but on the urging of the friendly woman in the back, agrees, for 2500 Colones ($5) per person.
5:00: Arrive in Monteverde and check into the Pension Santa Elena, a very friendly place with lots of cute dogs and free coffee and internet. Woo!
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What an adventure!!
ReplyDeleteYou guys are such troopers! I would have been whining by noon, HA.
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