Going into Costa Rica

Friday, Jan. 4, 2013—Changuinola, Panama to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

Today we had our first border crossing.  We had to start the day trying to find the right bus to get to the border.  None of the signs at the station named the border town, and everyone in the area tried to steer us either toward the bus that goes all the way to San Jose or to a taxi.  Eventually, a young boy helped us, and the posted fare rate inside the bus indicated a stop at the town on the border.

It is a unique border at Guabito/Sixaola.  It’s a former railroad bridge with offices on either side.  The offices are quite disorganized, and on the Panama side there is a scam forcing foreigners to pay a fee for having been in the Bocas province.  On the Costa Rica side, there is one line leading to two windows—one for people going to Panama and one for people coming to Costa Rica.  After standing in line for about 10 minutes with little movement, a Costa Rican woman standing in front of us and heading to Panama went up to the window and then came back and told us to go around the line to the entrance window for Costa Rica because everyone else was going the other way.  That saved us maybe 20-30 minutes of standing in line.  Most interesting about the crossing, though was the bridge.  The tracks were still there with wooden boards on either side.  There were gaps in the boards and some of them were loose and flipping up when we stepped on one end of them.  It was an adventure to cross there.

I was very lucky at Costa Rican immigration.  They require that a person have a ticket of some kind for leaving Costa Rica (to assure that people aren’t trying to sneak in and stay).  My flight home is from Nicaragua, so under normal circumstances, they would require me to either buy a return ticket to Panama or to buy an onward ticket to Nicaragua before stamping my passport to prove that I planned to leave the country.  Wes went before me in line.  The sign said to show your ticket for exciting the country.  Wes is flying out of Liberia in Costa Rica, and the man checked his paperwork carefully.  When I stepped up with my own flight schedule looking just like Wes’, the man just quickly stamped my passport and gave me back my paperwork.  He assumed that my ticket was for a departure from Liberia, too, since we were together.  Whew!

The bus for Puerto Viejo left maybe 20 minutes after we got across the border, so we were lucky, since buses to there only leave every 1 or 2 hours apart during the day.  The trip was slow with the bus stopping often to let off or take on passengers.  It finally arrived in P.V. at 10:45.  We agreed that we couldn’t have easily made the trip all the way from Boquete in one day and that it was good that we made our stop in Changuinola and then started the trip for crossing the border from there.

Puerto Viejo is overrun with tourists.  We knew it would be, but since the busiest season (Christmas to New Years) has ended, we figured we could find a room.  Our first choice place had nothing but beds in dormitories.  Our second choice place had only a room that sleeps 5 persons which was overpriced for two and did not include anything extra.  They sent us to another place which was fully booked.  THEY sent us to two more places, and there was a room for us at one of them for a better price.  Still, it is a huge two-story suite with 3 beds, a refrigerator, and both an upstairs balcony and a downstairs patio, each with a table and chairs and a hammock.  The place is nice, and the price at $45 per night is a bargain here in P.V.

Puerto Viejo is really a seaside village that has become a surfer’s paradise.  There is no real downtown.  Instead, there are just individual shops and restaurants scattered along the road.  Going southward toward a national park, there are many restaurants, hostels, hotels, spas, etc.  We walked about 4 km (2 1/2 miles) down that road in the afternoon seeing the jungle, the developments, and occasionally going onto the beach to watch the waves and the people.  It’s a beautiful setting.

In general, P.V. is expensive.  A simple plate of food, at a stall operated by one woman and having only 3 plain tables setting on sand in front of it, cost $9.  At the supermarket, cola cost at least twice what it did in Panama.  We are guessing that this is predominantly because this is a remote destination resort and that prices will be more reasonable as we go elsewhere in the country.  We’ll see.  We feel we have spent enough time here and will move onward tomorrow if we don’t have trouble getting a bus out of here.  Today, there were crowds waiting to push their way on our bus as we got off.