Entering Costa Rica - From San Juan to Monteverde

Getting to Monteverde from San Juan is more than possible to do in a day, and without a shuttle. The bus times for the La Irma connection is the only real pain point, at the time of writing there is a bus between 3 and 3:30pm so make sure you're there before then and everything will be fine. We got to La Irma and had time for lunch at the restaurant there which made for a much more relaxing journey!

Options

Shuttle from San Juan - costs between 30-40 USD. All the people we spoke to says this includes a shuttle to La Irma in Costa Rica where you need to wait for the public bus.

Public bus - You need to make an early start to get to the border with good time. You need to get to La Irma junction before 3 to make the connection to Monteverde which arrives from Juntas between 3 and 3:30pm

Costs

Exit taxes

To Exit Nicaragua we paid a total of 3 dollars.

1 dollar - to enter the border zone apparently
2 dollar - exit fee (we ended up paying 150 Cordobas after much headache as they didn't have change for 20 dollars)

Buses

Total about 10 USD each

20 Cordobas each from San Juan to Rivas
20 Cordobas each from Rivas to Penas Blanca (tried to charge us for bags)

2,300 Colon each from Penas Blanca to La Irma with Deldu
2,000 Colon each from La Irma to Monteverde

Journal

Often the problem with border crossings and travelling on the cheap is that often things change. Bus times change, bus stations change, prices and taxes change. To add to that there's always things that could go wrong, maybe the border crossing takes longer than expected, or it's a public holiday you didn't know about, maybe there's a traffic jam.

So reading up on other blogs we found a lot of information saying getting from Nicaragua to Costa Rica (Monteverde) is possible but there was a fair amount of different information on bus times. We explored San Juans shuttle options where we found it was between 30USD - 40USD. When we probed for more information we found that the shuttle actually only takes you so far (in most cases the La Irma junction) where you need to get off and take the public bus. They essentially charge you 30USD to take you where the public buses take you for only a couple of dollars.

The other option is to pay 15USD to get to the shuttle to the border, the advantage here is that you might get there earlier which would avoid any issues with long border times, however we got on the bus while some were still waiting for their shuttles. We find this a lot with shuttles where you book a time and they show up way later than expected and then drive around town picking everyone else up before stopping somewhere for breakfast for half an hour, it's very annoying when you've paid premium for it. In theory you get piece of mind but in my experience it's just as stressful and often far less comfortable than the public buses (even the chicken bus!)

So, we aimed to get the 6am but to La Virgen (which is at the junction after Rivas on the way to Penas Blanca (the border town with Costa Rica). We got to the bus station about 5 minutes late and as our Spanish isn't great I found it hard to work out exactly what bus was going where. In the end a bus came at around 6:15am and it was headed to Rivas which we decided to go for. We paid 30 Cordobas to get to Rivas which was the same as the way there and included the infamous "baggage tax" of Nicaragua. The bus we were on did actually go through La Virgen and I was tempted to get off however the bus was packed and Rivas was only and extra half an hour in total. It would have been a pain to get our bags off an would have only caused mass confusion.

When we got to Rivas we jumped on to another bus headed to Penas Blanca, this bus was a somewhere inbetween a chicken bus and a quite upmarket bus, but it had Penas Blanca written on the front and they said it would only be 20 Cordobas which was even cheaper than to Rivas. We stowed our bags below and were soon on our way to the border. It was about an hour to the border so by the time we got to the border it had just gone 8am, we were making good time. We hopped off the bus and grabbed our bags, at this point they asked for another 20 Cordobas. This time we put our foot down. We felt bad for arguing over what is about 2 AUD however we'd reached our breaking point with the random taxes and charges that appeared out of nowhere. We asked why noone else was paying and extra twenty, and said we had paid on the bus. We stood around for a couple of minutes until they lost interest in us (perhaps they thought we had paid one of them) and eventually we walked off with no issues.

It was a short walk to the immigration of Nicaragua. Along the way there were lots of people asking if we wanted immigration forms, we'd read about people doing this and then trying to charge you so we declined. You can get the forms in the offical building. When we entered the building we were asked to pay the first exit tax of 1 dollar. We did that and got our recipt (I can't remember if we paid in Cordobas or not). We then joined the queue to get our exit stamp. We changed queue a few times to see if we could beat the queues and when we got to the front we were told we were in completely the wrong queue and needed to be over the other side. We walked over and joined that queue, when we reached the front they asked us to pay the next 2 USD exit tax. I had a 20USD note which I handed over which was recieved with a shake of the head. "No cambio", no change. We asked if we could pay in Cordobas to which he replied no. We stood there for a few minutes saying that we didn't have change and surely they have change if they charge everyone this. Eventually the man called his collegue over who said they couldn't give change, and said a lot we didn't understand. We asked again if we could pay in Cordobas, the new man nodded his head this time and said it would be 150 Cordobas, this was more than 4 USD, but at least it would save us some trouble. After a conversation between the two border control officers and a lot of taps at the computer we got our exit stamps for Nicaragua, phew!

Costa Rica

Crossing the border

On the otherside we went to the loo, and paid 5 Cordobas for the privledge, we later found there were free toilets (a rare thing in Central America) at the Costa Rican immigration building. The walk to the Costa Rican immigration is about 800 metres along a dusty road with lots of big trucks driving past. We asked for directions a couple of times, but if you keep walking straight you will reach it, and you can't miss it. There we exchanged our remaining Cordobas with a dodgy exchange man, and then went in to fill in our immigration forms for Costa Rica which we got at the counter. When we gave the woman our forms she asked us a couple of questions including if we had a ticket booked out of Costa Rica, we had heard this could happen and sometimes you need to go out and book a ticket out of Costa Rica just to enter. I told her we planned to travel overland to Panana and that we only were planning to stay 2 weeks. This seemed satisfy her though and she gave us the standard 90 days for Costa Rica.

We wondered through customs which was pretty much just a room with a few scanners and some people having siestas, we put our bags through the scanners but there didn't appear to be anyone checking the scans and then we were waved on through and on to Costa Rican soil. Next to get to Monteverde.

Once your through the border you need to get the onward bus to La Irma were you can make the connection to Monteverde. We asked around and even asked a few of the buses, they pointed in a vague direction where all the bus sellers were. Apparently you needed to buy before you got on the bus. We got tickets for about 2,300 each (Costa rican money is about 400C to 1 AUD, so again we needed to get our heads around that). We got our ticket for the 10am bus to San Jose, but only as far as La Irma. It was 9:30am so we had a while to wait and by this point we were very, very hungry. We couldn't find any shops to get some pringles, the only things being sold were dodgy looking bags of chicken tortillas that looked like food poisoning waiting to happen.

We got the Deldu bus to La Irma at 10am

We got on the bus at 10am, which turned out to be quite a nice double decker. It was back to the buses where not only did the air-conditioning work, but they wanted to prove it. It was freezing on the bus! On the plus side the seats were nice and there was leg room. There were a few other people on the bus heading to Monteverde too so now it felt like we had a bit more strength in numbers. The bus ride was about two and a half hours with only a few stops, we pulled in to La Irma where a whole load of backpackers got off the bus, so we were definitely on the right track. I'd found on a website that the bus should be around 2:30pm though there were two bus stops and some people were waiting at the bus stop already, it was 12:30pm. We went in to the resturant opposite and asked there, the man there said the bus would come between 3pm and 3:30pm and would stop round the corner.

We trusted the man more than any other information we'd read but still kept out bags ready to rush across the road if need be. There were enough people already waiting that we'd have a bit of time to make it over there. We sat down at the restaurant and ordered some rice with chicken. When that arrived we consumed it very quickly and soon were ordering some chips, which also went very quickly. The restaurant had surprisingly good wifi so we stayed there for a couple of hours, and even made time to brew ourselves a coffee.`It came to 2:30pm and the bus still hadn't appeared so our trust in the restaurant owner grew. That said we had held our nerve enough so headed over to the bus stop to join the rest of the backpackers at around 2:50pm. We chatted to a few of the people there for about fifteen minutes when suddenly a bus appeared round the corner. The collective of backpackers all jumped to their feet and readied themselves to get the best seats. We all piled on to the bus which I think was about 2,000C each before finding our seats. Everyone packed up their bags at the back of the bus and everyone got a seat, though it was busy!

The bus up to Monteverde had some spectacular scenery, the bus seemed to be heading uphill constantly for two hours and sometimes seemed to be driving along a ridge so you could look out both left and right and see for miles. It was extremely pretty. The roads winded their wasy round the landscape and the bus made it's way (very slowly) up some incredible hills. Soon the paved road gave way to a dirt track where the bus still soldiered on. It was very slow progress and though the distance was only about 40 kilometres it took a while and we arrived in to Monteverde (St Elena) at about sixish at the bus terminal which is at the shopping centre just across from the post office.

We jumped off the best and grabbed our bags as we wanted to get to our hostel of choice first. We hadn't booked anything so didn't want the rest of the bus to get there before us and book everything out. We got our bags first and then were on our way. It's a hilly area so we had to struggle up and down a couple of hills but it was only about a 10 minute walk. We got to Hostel Tranquillo where we attempted to book in, we were wrestling with our Spanish when another backpacker helped us to translate with the receptionist. Kate said that we'd seen a cheaper rate on HostelWorld at 24USD a night instead of the 28USD the woman was offering us. The woman rang up her superior to ask about the rate and came back with a yes! The guy who was helping with the translations also got the rate, so we think it was even in the end. We booked in for two nights and had made it to Monteverde in one piece.

The journey itself wasn't bad and all the buses were easy. The break in the middle for lunch also made it manageable so we had time to recharge before the next bus. For this particular trip the shuttle is definitely not necessary and wouldn't save any time either as you need to get the public bus anyway at La Irma!