GETTING IN
I woke up at 5:30am in Boquete, Panama, to catch the first bus heading to David, the main regional hub. Once at the terminal, I asked around for a connection to Paso Canoas (shout “FRONTERA!” whenever you’re trying to cross a border in Central America – someone will direct you accordingly) and caught a second bus which got me in just before 9ish iirc. Local transport round here never quite drops you off at passport control however, and this time was a particular conundrum: I eventually found what seemed to be a functioning border post, but was informed that they couldn’t give me my exit stamp because they only facilitated entry into Panama from Costa Rica. Indeed, I was told by multiple individuals (customs officials among them) that I’d need to head 5km into Costa Rica to get stamped out!
Now this didn’t make any sense to me and I was visibly perplexed to the point where I’d consequently become a magnet for multiple taxi drivers, all offering ‘assistance’ by way of overpriced rides to the mythical exit post. Thing is, I knew full well that border crossings and taxi drivers = a recipe for scams, and there was nothing in the (brief) research that I’d done to suggest that the Panamanian office had miraculously moved 5km into neighbouring territory – but the fact that government employees had stated this to be the case was muddying the waters. And as more and more people approached me hollering indecipherable information (my limited Spanish exacerbating my confusion), I eventually became so overwhelmed that I started burying my poor head in my hands – which is when I found myself manhandled by one of the drivers and bundled into the back of his taxi with two burly, surly-looking men as fellow passengers.
Flabbergasted at this turn of events (but too shell-shocked and worn-down to offer any meaningful resistance), I was now being driven into Costa Rica without having officially exited Panama. Part of me felt sure I was being human trafficked (the surly fellow riders didn’t help in this regard), but the taxi driver turned out to be a kindly older gentleman who actually seemed to have my best interests at heart. Recognising my distress, he assured me that we were going to exit Panama, although my desperate (and only partially successful) attempts to load Google Maps and ascertain my location with the new roaming network did little to relieve my anxiety. But lo and behold, within a few minutes he’d safely deposited me at a gigantic new border facility in the Costa Rican boonies. What everyone had said was true: the ‘border’ has indeed moved – a recent development from a few months ago that’s not yet been widely-publicised for some reason.
these were the only images I snapped at the border due to being so overwhelmed (did a better job with later border crossings tho)
these were the only images I snapped
at the border due to being so overwhelmed
(did a better job with later border crossings tho)
I think the driver asked only $3 for his troubles, and I thanked him with eternal blessings before attempting to navigate this gleaming, eerily-empty new outpost. A lone official walking the grounds gave me some pointers, and I soon exited Panama fairly painlessly despite the convoluted lead-up – but entering Costa Rica then turned out to be a complete pain in the ass. I’d read beforehand that border staff technically require proof of onward travel out of the country, but: a) I was freewheelin’ this trip and therefore had no such proof; b) I knew that such requirements were not always enforced at land borders; and c) I was hoping to use my good looks (lol!) and natural charm (lolllll!) to bend the rules in the event that enforcement was made. Alas, dem looks and dat charm ain’t all that, because I was confronted with a no-nonsense abuela who was very friendly, but also as by-the-book as it gets. She insisted that I show proof of a flight or bus out of the country before I could get let in and sat me down in a corner with the WiFi password until I had made such arrangements.
There was no way I was going to drop $ on actual tickets when I wasn’t certain about my departure date, and I even told her as much. She wasn’t taking no for an answer, however, so after a few minutes’ deliberating, I hedged my bets with OnwardTicket.com, a longstanding travel hack where $16 or so gets you a verifiable flight reservation for 48 hours. But by the time I’d received my fake tickets, the abuela had disappeared and in her stead was a considerably grumpier male official who spoke zero English and who cared not an iota about proof of onward travel! After realising that I was unable to answer his questions (in Spanish), he gave up, stamped me in, and waved me on through, meaning all that rigamarole had turned out to be for nada!
I was exasperated beyond belief at having wasted precious energy, time, and now money on this stupid border crossing, but there was one more predicament yet to solve: getting into Costa Rica proper. This new immigration facility is in the middle of nowhere – far removed from all the transport options that congregate around borders to whisk people to their next destination. Thus, I had no way of getting out of there and continuing my already-arduous journey. Luckily, though I hadn’t endeared myself to the fools doing the passport stamping, I’d gotten myself on friendly terms with other staff members. Two of them were trying to come up with solutions on my behalf when fortune decided to be kind for once: an air-conditioned tourist bus came in from Panama and was stopping to let its human cargo get the relevant stamps before continuing its journey. The border officials helpfully convinced the driver to allow me on board (for a slightly pricey $20 but we’ll let it slide) and so – at last! – I was on my way to… San José!
the first couple of days in Costa Rica
WHERE
San José was not an intended stop in Costa Rica. One thing to know about Central American capitals and the larger urban centres: all of them, with the exception of Panama City, have sketchy af reputations and aren’t really viewed as desirable travel destinations. My goal was to reach San José and then find an onward bus to La Fortuna – a backpacker hub where I wanted to base myself for a couple of days. Alas, the bus that I’d hopped on wasn’t the paciest of movers, and I didn’t get in to San José until close to sunset, by which point connecting transport to La Fortuna had long since ceased running. I ended up overnighting in Barrio Escalante: a relatively safe, trendy neighbourhood which would have been fun to explore after dark were it not for my being drained by a full day’s travel. I ate at a nearby vegan restaurant, sorted out the onward bus ticket, and promptly crashed.
(Sidenote: the bus to San José had passed through Uvita, supposedly a nature-lover’s paradise, and Quepos, a gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park which was on my must-do list for Costa Rica. I was unaware of these stops until a couple of hours into the journey, after which I seriously considered getting off before San José in order to see Manuel Antonio at the very least. ChatGPT – which I was far too reliant on during this trip, not always to positive effect – suggested that it would cause me more headaches for me to disembark early, and convinced me to rest up in San José before backtracking to Manuel Antonio in a few days’ time. That never happened as it became only more logistically-challenging to reach the park later on, and I therefore ended up surrendering two possible highlights due to my poor foresight and indecisiveness.)
I made it to La Fortuna the next afternoon and had a fairly relaxing evening pondering my options before opting for a group tour the next morning. It was $100 for a full day taking in the Arenal Volcano lava fields, the popular La Fortuna waterfall, and some hot springs to round things off. I generally enjoyed the activities, though I was hoping for some more fruitful wildlife-spotting (I was desperate to see toucans and sloths!) and there was a major mood-dampener in the form of our group getting verbally berated by the tour guide at trip’s end (a number of us were supposedly poor listeners and were too slow on the trails; dude must have been having a really bad day). Still, the local liqueur that we’d relished at the hot springs got us in the mood to keep our party going in spite (or perhaps because) of the unexpected tension. Sadly, La Fortuna on a weeknight isn’t the wildest of locations, so I ended up safely back in my accommodation by 1am despite my best efforts to rage deep into the night.
The next day, I toyed with the idea of visiting Rio Celeste – another stunning waterfall in the region, famed for its lush turquoise hues – but figured the $ would be better spent exploring the cloud forests of Monteverde, where I was hoping to gain better opportunities of witnessing some of the famed Costa Rican fauna. I hitched a ride with a new friend who happened to be heading that way, and subsequently forked out for a night walk in the ‘jungle’ and early-morning entry into Curi Cancha nature reserve – excursions which supposedly offered the highest chances of seeing some wildlife. But for me: nada. Again. Words cannot express how badly I wanted to see a damned toucan at this point, but all I’d managed was a sleeping one via the night guide’s binoculars. I attempted to save both the trip and my rapidly-waning enthusiasm for Costa Rica by pivoting into adventure instead: first I considered doing another waterfall hike, but was unable to find affordable transport to the trailhead in time; then I considered ziplining with a couple of friendly new arrivals in my hostel, but the packages sold out just as I’d made the call to join them; and finally I resorted to some lame ass ‘hanging bridges’. Which might be adventurous for those that haven’t hiked a day in their lives and who have some fear of heights. But I’m not one of those people. $50 poorly spent.
After multiple wildlife and adventure #fails in succession, I wondered if it was best to retreat to the safety of beaches and Pacific sunsets. Aforementioned friend-with-a-car was heading to Manuel Antonio (which has both beach and animals) the next afternoon and I seriously considered tagging along given my earlier near-miss at Quepos. I also thought about heading over to the bohemian surfer’s paradise of Santa Teresa. Both options had appeal, but they would have bled precious time and finances even further, and would have significantly-compounded the logistical challenge of reaching Nicaragua, my next stop. Given that I’d already gone way overbudget in Panama and now here in Costa Rica (admittedly the two most expensive countries in the region), I concluded that it was best to cut my losses, head north, and cross into Nicaragua ASAP – a country where things were apparently much cheaper, and where I had a travel buddy already there and waiting to reconnect.
GETTING AROUND
Buses in Costa Rica were… fine. The country’s tourism industry is considerably more developed than its neighbours, and booking tickets is a relatively breezy task that can even be done online. The rides themselves were perhaps not as comfortable as in Panama but certainly nothing to complain about, and while Latino time is a persistent issue, it’s not egregiously so (particularly bearing in mind what was to come later in my trip). Another bonus I appreciated was that lunch stops often took place at locations with decent veggie options. I’d willingly take Costa Rican buses again, and would rank the overall transport system here behind only Mexico and Panama – and way, way ahead of the other countries I visited. Note that while intercity buses are manifold, public transport within cities can be frustratingly limited, as I found out in Monteverde.
As mentioned earlier, a key journey – between La Fortuna and Monteverde – was made possible thanks to a friend from my Arenal Volcano tour who’d rented a car and was fortuitously heading in the same direction at the same time. Were it not for her generosity, that leg would have been considerably longer and more challenging (I think it requires a shuttle, a ferry, and then another shuttle). I remain indebted!
Monteverde
REFLECTIONS
Costa Rica has a reputation on the backpacker circuit as exorbitantly pricey and not necessarily worth the expense. I met multiple travellers taking similar Central American odysseys to myself (although at understandably slower pace), many of whom had either bypassed Costa Rica completely or who’d whizzed through at speed in order to minimise the financial hit. While I don’t think it’s quite that prohibitive – you’d think it was Switzerland, the way some people speak of it – the reputation is at least partially justified. Daily expenditure on things like meals and transport are comparable to neighbouring Panama, but the outdoor experiences and activities that the country’s built its tourism sector around aren’t cheap at all. And they quickly add up. To illustrate: the Lost Waterfalls hike that I did in Panama cost $10 for trail entry plus around $5 for round-trip transport. The El Tigre waterfall hike that I wished to do in Monteverde – of similar length and challenge – would have cost $33 for the entrance ticket and at least $20 for a taxi in one direction (a $12 shuttle service exists, but I’d missed the last departure at 11am; public transport is non-existent). Two comparable experiences requiring vastly different expenditure.
Compounding the costs was how underwhelming my selected activities turned out to be. Of all the things I did, only La Fortuna Waterfall really lived up to the hype (and we had fairly limited time there). I’m aware that a major cause of that is my own unrealistic expectations. I’d mentally slotted in Costa Rica as the ‘wildlife’ chapter of this trip, but the abundance of native fauna that I was hoping for ultimately amounted to a sleeping toucan and a distant sloth, both viewed through binoculars from afar. Bad decision-making intensified this dearth: not stopping at Manuel Antonio when I had the perfect opportunity to do so; basing myself in overly touristic areas with limited transport connections (La Fortuna, Monteverde); and failing to research and prioritise more obvious wildlife hotspots like Corcovado National Park. If proof were ever required of my anti-planning working to my detriment, this was it.
As with everywhere I go, however, I enjoyed the country in spite of my woes. I loved the sodas: small, family-run eateries, many of which serve up an affordable casado vegetariano/vegano (rice, beans, salad – all I need to survive!). I enjoyed the general ease of things – English is more widely-spoken here than elsewhere, so this was the last point at which I could lazily get away with such miserable Spanish. And this was also the last point in my trip where meaningful human connections were made with such freedom and ease (I inadvertently ended up in some empty / weird hostels after this). There were a bunch of lovely folks, locals and travellers alike, who gave me plenty of reasons to smile. Most memorable of all were the elderly Minnesotan couple who I did my night walk with. After spending a lifetime finding myself naturally drawn to Americans (broadly similar cultural values + broadly similar language = easy friends in my head), I’m at a point in the current climate where I need to know exactly what a US citizen stands for before I deem them worthy of interaction. I’ll confess that I’d looked at these elderly retirees with mild skepticism upon arrival (a flaw within myself, for sure) – but I needn’t have worried. They were both badass, vociferous members of the MAGA resistance and the sweetest people I could have spent an evening alongside. They were also wildly enthusiastic about Costa Rica, and I think they probably exemplify my conclusions about the country: it’s a wonderful place to visit if you’re uninhibited by temporal and financial constraints, doubly so if you’re able to hire your own vehicle. Sadly, that wasn’t me in March, and tbh it likely won’t ever be me given how I roll. But if that ever changes for whatever reason, I may well find an excuse to return. For those stupid toucans if nothing else!
Click here for the full Costa Rica gallery with some additional trip details.
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