Sunday Funday is one of the main parties on the Central American portion of the Gringo Trail. You spend all day drinking in the sun and hopping from pool to pool. In my opinion, there’s no better way to follow that up than with a twelve hour bus to San José.
If you’ve remotely researched a trip to Central America, I’m sure you’ve heard of the weekly parties in Nicaragua. You could plan your entire trip to the country around hitting every party, if that’s what you wanted. Now I’m not a big party person, but I couldn’t spend 2 weeks in Nicaragua and not go to at least one. So we decided to follow some friends to San Juan del Sur for one last day of fun.
The day starts early, and, if you drink at a pace like I do, ends early. I won’t get into too much detail about what the day entails here. All you need to know is that I was, essentially, half-carried home to the hostel at about 9pm. This was the last time I would see some friends that I had run into consistently since I landed in Mexico 3 months earlier. So after all the emotional goodbyes, we eventually turned in at about 10pm.
This doesn’t sound very late at all but I need you to consider 3 things:
1: None of us had slept the night before, as a power cut in the town had led to an alarm across the street which woke us all up at about 3am
2: We’d been drinking since around midday
3: I had to be ready to leave by 8am to get to the Costa Rican border
How did we get here
Let me backtrack a bit. My trip through Central America was always going to end in Panama. The initial plan was to travel from Mexico to El Salvador alone, spend 2 weeks in Nicaragua with my partner, and then I was going to blast through Costa Rica and spend 2 weeks working my way through Panama.
However I realised fairly early into my trip that this wasn’t going to work. For one, this was my first time travelling solo and it had taken me a few weeks to settle into the flow of travelling solo. I knew once my partner went home I’d struggle to get back into the swing of being alone again, and two weeks is not long enough for that. Also, I did not have enough money. My budget was a bit ambitious, and I hadn’t really factored in 2 weeks in the more-expensive Panama.
So, the plan adjusted to travelling directly to Panama City, which quickly became a bit of a logistical nightmare. There are direct flights to Panama from Managua, but these flights were expensive. Also, my partner was flying home from San José anyway (flying to Europe from Managua is quite tricky) and doesn’t speak any Spanish, and I didn’t feel great about leaving her to fend for herself on the trip from Nicaragua to San José.
So, the plan was:
Get to San José somehow, spend the night in the capital, and fly to Panama the following afternoon. The problem lay with getting to San José.
This isn’t the most common route: most people travelling south from San Juan del Sur either head towards Arenal (for La Fortuna) or Tamarindo, or they head back up to Nicaragua to fly to Panama, so information on travelling to San Jose is a bit thin on the ground.
There is a shuttle service, but it cost $72 each which would defeat the point of not flying direct. We had eventually settled on heading to Rivas and getting an afternoon TicaBus to San José.
But when we checked into our hostel in San Juan del Sur, we saw our hostel offered a “shuttle” service – a taxi to the bus station at Peñas Blancas and a TicaBus ticket straight through to San José – for $40 each. The catch? The taxi left at 8am so we could be on the bus ready to cross the border by 10.
Leaving San Juan del Sur
When I eventually managed to open my eyes I came to the quick decision that I was, perhaps, still a bit drunk, meaning no matter how dry my mouth was in that moment, the worst was yet to come. A few of our friends from the previous night had surfaced for the desayuno tipico that the hostel offered every morning, and while I was urged to eat as we didn’t know when the next chance would be, I just couldn’t stomach it. Me, my partner and another girl from our hostel were then waved over to our “taxi”, which turned out to be a local guy in a 4×4, to begin the 45 minute drive from San Juan del Sur to Peñas Blancas.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I’m not a massive partier. I also mentioned that I ended up being carried to bed. One thing I forgot to mention is that I my alarm was set for 6am. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
Peñas Blancas Bus Station
An incredibly disinterested employee from TicaBus met us here, sat us down next to a couple who were due on the bus before us. She took our passports and gave us tags for our bags while she filled out some kind of paper form before handing them back to us, and telling us she’d be back in an hour to get us on the bus. At this point, the sun started really coming out and I started to regret not indulging in some gallo pinto at breakfast. So I decided to take the risk of food poisoning and get myself a classic fried chicken meal at the only comedor open inside the bus station. A risky decision, considering we were about to spend an undetermined amount of time on a bus but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
When I got back, the girls told me the Tica Bus employee had returned briefly to give instructions on what happened next. Unfortunately, the instructions she gave were entirely in Spanish, and neither of my companions could speak any and until now had been relying on me to do any translation, so we had no idea what the instructions were. The only thing either of them understood was siéntate which didn’t provide me with much comfort.
An hour passed, then another, and we started to get concerned we weren’t going to make it to San Jose today
But then, like a mirage in the desert to my beer-pickled brain, she returned and ushered for us to follow her through the bus station to the coach park at the back, wrestling through SIM card vendors trying to sell us SIMs for Costa Rica. I did buy a very cold Diet Coke from one lady here for $2, which I thought was quite steep until I saw Costa Rican prices.
A woman in front of us seemed to be having an argument with the driver, and our friendly rep had left us to fend for ourselves here so we weren’t quite sure what was going on, until the bus driver looked at us and asked if we were planning on getting on. We were the only foreigners in the whole bus station by this time, so he’d definitely been told to expect us and explained we needed to tag our bags and load them in the compartment below, before we bundled onto the bus for the drive to the border.
Crossing the border
For me, personally, I found it harder to leave Nicaragua than I did to enter. We had to take our bags off the bus and queue for around 30 minutes in a hall with no AC. You’ll also be asked at this point to complete a departure form, similar to the form you would’ve completed on entry.
I was then subjected to an interrogation so intense I briefly wondered if I’d joined the wrong queue and was actually trying to get into Nicaragua. They wanted to know where I’d been, if I’d visited Nicaragua before, what I’d done there, what I did for work etc. I really thought they were going to detain me when I told the agent that I used to work for the Government, but eventually she collected my exit fee of $3 (no change given here so have exact cash) and my entry receipt, stamped me out and sent me to get my bags scanned.
Side note, by the way – you may have to pay a fee to enter the border zone. When I was there, it was $1, and you pay at a small kiosk before you enter the immigration building. The reason I bring this up is I have seen people online say it’s a “common border scam” and while it seems like one, it is legitimate. I asked a woman who was sat behind me on our bus (who told me she travels across the border fairly regularly to visit family) and she told me it is a real official fee, albeit they don’t always have someone manning the booth to pay. Unfortunately we happened to be there on a day where he’d clocked in for work bright and early. Bummer.
Entering Costa Rica
If you’re crossing independently, you’ll have to make the trek across a sort of no mans land to the Costa Rican side, however we were made to get back on the bus to drive across, before unloading our bags again and queuing in an even stuffier room. The questions here are briefer – there is no entry fee and no dictator-led regime to answer twenty million questions to. The only question asked here is: When will you leave Costa Rica?
My answer of “mañana” seemed to satisfy the agent and he checked my flight ticket and stamped me in no problem. We had our bags checked and trundled over to the bus. However our new friend had a bit of a problem – she had a bus ticket from Puerto Viejo to Panama City booked for three days from now. Here comes side note number two: the border agents don’t always accept bus tickets as onward travel. Why? Who knows! But she ended up having to plead her case for about 20 minutes before they let her in. Our bus driver huffed and tutted when I told him over and over he couldn’t leave without her, but ultimately his bad mood didn’t matter as we were now officially over the border and in country number 18 – Costa Rica.
Trouble at the border
Once we had all gone through immigration and gathered back on the bus, we encountered our next issue. Our driver came along and did a reluctant headcount (I think partially due to the stink I made about leaving our Dutch friend behind – what’s the point of learning the local language if you don’t use it!) before hopping into his cab and hitting the road.
Or so we thought. When our driver finally turned on the engine to start the 90 minute or so journey to Liberia (and I was settling in to try and sleep off my hangover) we encountered a problem. The bus wouldn’t start. Of all the sketchy modes of transport I have taken in this part of the world, I did not expect a TicaBus to be the one to fail me at this crucial time.
Cue every man over 40 in a 100 metre radius strolling over to stand hands clasped behind their backs to give their 2 pence on the situation. Normally, I would find this incredibly funny, but it was 35 degrees and, without the engine running, there was no aircon, the Spanish dub of The Bad Guys had just started to play for the third time, and I had just hit that “sweat your sins” stage of my hangover so this was less than ideal.
Eventually, someone kicked something at the right angle, started the engine and, more importantly, the sweet, sweet aircon. My partner was a bit concerned about the whole ordeal, but me and our new Dutch friend had spent enough time in Central America by this point to be surprised, if anything, that it had taken less than an hour to resolve.
Finally on the move
Eventually, we arrived in Liberia, the capital of Guancaste province and a major transport hub for the North of the country. By this time, the whole bus had spread out and I was not looking forward to sharing my seat again but by some miracle we did not pick up a single passenger here. I was starting to really look forward to getting to San Jose by this point, and decided to ask the woman sat behind me how long it would be until we reached San Jose. She just sort of laughed at me and went back to her book. Briefly wondered if I’d made a mistake with my Spanish, but later came to realise this was more of an “oh bless your heart” kind of situation.
At this point, we’d been travelling for about 4 hours, and we started to wonder whether taking the cheap option was the right choice. As our bus started to ascend up towards Monteverde, the lock on the toilet door failed just in time for us to hit the windy mountain roads. Some poor sucker had to keep kicking it shut. Unfortunately, I was that sucker. It fell on me and my new Nicaraguan friend behind me to try and wedge the door shut between uses.
Then, just as I finally started nodded off, I woke up to a sudden stream of water on my face. Just in time for us to get to the rainforest at the beginning of the wet season, our bus window has a leak and is dripping water in at a pace I’ve not seen since I left South Wales back in February.
And to top it all off, our driver seems to decide he is suddenly allergic to driving on the correct side of the road.
I mean, I’d had some pretty dodgy journeys in Guatemalan shuttles a month earlier (like the guy arguing with his girlfriend over the phone while driving through an active quarry) but for some reason this happening on a coach felt a bit scarier. I managed to convince myself this was I was being a bit dramatic about it until the driver swung out on to the other side of the road at 60mph and someone at the front of the bus called him a fucking moron. This may have been his prompt to take a break, as the next thing I knew we were pulling into a rest stop-slash-seafood restaurant just outside the town of Rancho Ania.
Arriving into San José
By this time I hadn’t eaten anything since my dodgy meal at Peñas Blancas bus station at around 9am. It was now around 4:30pm. Important to bare in mind that I, for some reason, thought this journey would take no longer than 6 hours door to door. Why did I think that? God knows. Delusion, maybe.
Finally, I managed to get some snacks and sugary drinks for the journey ahead. Just as well, as someone from our bus told me weren’t likely to arrive in San José until at least 7pm. We bundled back on to the bus and I settled in, finally feeling like I’d detoxed the last Toña from my system.
I can’t lie, the next few hours passed in a pretty uneventful blur. I manage to watch almost an entire series and squeeze in a nap before our bus stops at San José Airport, in Alajuela, where we bade farewell to our new friend who disembarked here. Naively, we wish her luck in her onward journey tomorrow to Puerto Viejo. Blissfully unaware that we were still a whole two hours away from the TicaBus station in San Jose in bumper to bumper traffic.
By the time we finally arrived, it was about 7:30pm.
We left our hostel in San Juan del Sur just before 8am, so needless to say we were a bit hysterical by this point. My new Nicaraguan friend/bus toilet comrade warned me earlier in the day that we should not leave the bus station or wander around this part of San José at night, and we could immediately see why. So I am imparting this knowledge to you. The area around the Tica Bus station in San José is notoriously dodgy.
In all likelihood, you will arrive here at night or very early in the morning, and you willprobably have just completed a very long journey and will want to just go to bed. But this isn’t really an area you want to be wandering around at night. The bus station itself is safe. It’s manned 24/7 and there’s always an armed guard at the door. But the streets around the bus station, as is very typical in major cities all over the world, is a hotspot for petty crime.
Do yourselves a favour and get a taxi
It’s early enough for the public buses to be running but, me personally, I did not want to spend the next hour or so working out how to get to my hostel.
If you’re jumping back on the early morning bus to Panama, you can actually stay in the bus station, in the hotel upstairs.
I wish I’d known about the hotel, as we were only in San José for 12 hours or so. But we’d booked a private room in a hostel in Barrio Escalante, a safe and quite trendy neighbourhood to the west of the city, so we needed to haul ass across the city.
Upon arrival, the receptionist gave us a brief rundown on where we could go for an early evening drink or get a nice dinner, and of the areas we should 100% not under any circumstances go to at night. But, given my timing miscalculation, our hangovers and our ultra long day, we ultimately opted for pizza and beer in bed.
Upon reflection
Would I recommend this journey? Well, recommend is a strong word. If I did it again, I’d do it independently, catching the bus from Rivas or Peñas Blancas without the middleman help of the rep. However, it did ultimately get me where I needed to go, and if you don’t speak much Spanish or aren’t very confident navigating public transport, or you’re just hanging out of your arsehole post-Sunday Funday, it’s a pretty straightforward way to get to the capital.
My main piece of advice for anyone embarking on this journey is: Don’t get so drunk the day before that you can’t stomach breakfast in the morning. You won’t likely get another chance to eat until gone 4pm.
Tips
Leaving San Juan del Sur
- If you’re in San Juan del Sur; you can book a “Shuttle Service” which usually consists of a taxi to the border and a bus ticket to San Jose. We booked ours at the reception of Surf Town Hostel, but you can probably book this through any of the bigger hostels or tour agencies in town.
- If you’re trying to do this independently, you can catch the Tica Bus from Rivas. Catch the local bus from the main street in SJDS (It will say Rivas on the front). Then, leave the bus station (ignore everyone trying to sell you various tickets) and head towards the bus stop opposite the MaxiPali, around here (link). If you book the ticket in person in Rivas, the bus will pick you up from the ticket office.
- The other option is to get to the border and get the bus from there. To do this, either take a taxi (it’s about a 45 min drive) or hop on a bus towards Rivas and ask the driver to let you off at La Virgen. From there, cross the border on foot and hop on a local bus on the other side to get to Monteverde and La Fortuna. If you’re going to Liberia or San José, buy a Tica Bus ticket at Peñas Blancas bus station and enjoy the ride.
Leaving Nicaragua
- You will have to pay a total of $4 to leave Nicaragua; $3 as an exit fee and $1 to actually enter the border zone
- You must pay these fees in USD. As far as I’m aware, you can’t pay in Cordoba, and they won’t offer you change at any point. So it’s worth making sure you have the exact amount in cash before you leave your accommodation. You also can’t pay by card and as of writing there are no ATMs in the border zone or, I believe, in the bus station.
- You will have to fill out an exit form, and you will also have to answer some questions about your time in Nicaragua and what you do for work. As far as I know, this is just for data collection, but when I told them I had previously worked for my local government they were a bit reluctant to let me go so maybe don’t tell them you work as a journalist or anything like that.
- Finally, they will search your bags. If you entered Nicaragua by land, it’s much less invasive than when you came in: your bags just get passed through a scanner. But it does take a bit of time. And if there’s anywhere you don’t want to be caught with anything naughty, it’s here.
Entering Costa Rica
- Depending where you’re from, most passports will allow you up to 180 days in the country. However, this is subject to a few caveats
- You must provide proof of onward travel. This usually has to be a flight ticket, but sometimes immigration will accept a bus ticket. Unfortunately there’s no concrete way to confirm these either way as it seems to depend on the mood of the officer that day.
- The border officer may ask you to provide proof of funds and, depending on the stamps in your passport, a Yellow Fever certificate.
- They may also ask you to provide the name and address of your accommodation for the night
- There is no fee to enter Costa Rica.
Arriving in San Jose
- The Tica Bus station is located here (link), in the Pitahaya area of the city.
- The area itself is generally safe during the day, but at night you are advised not to leave the bus station unless you have a taxi waiting, as the streets around the terminal are known for petty crime.
- There is a hotel in the terminal. I can’t comment on what it’s like inside but if you’re arriving late and hopping straight back on the bus in the morning to David or Panama City, it’ll probably do for the night
- If you’re staying elsewhere, order an Uber or inDrive if arriving after dark (note that these are technically illegal so you may be asked to sit up front)