Nicaragua to Costa Rica

Trip Date: Jan 2026. £1= 49.75 Nicaraguan Cordoba & 623 Costa Rica Colon May 2026

We chose to travel from Nicaragua to Costa Rica by local bus. Gekko Explorer does show a direct shuttle from San Juan Del Sur (where we were staying) to La Fortuna (where we wanted to go) - but as it would have cost a whopping $100 each and currently only has one, one star review, it wasn't remotely tempting as an option.

For the journey we would need the following:

• Enough money for the Nicaraguan buses, we allowed at least 200 Cordoba each.

• $1 for entry to the migration office

• $3 for the Nicaragua exit fee - Yes, this annoyingly does have to be in USD.

• Passports

• Proof of exit for Costa Rica officials

• Proof of address in Costa Rica

• Money to exchange into Colones

• Snacks - it was going to be a long day.

We started our journey in San Juan Del Sur: as it's a fairly small town there's only one official bus stop, so that's where we headed. The bus we needed was heading to Rivas, although we would be hopping off at La Virgen - the first stop along the main highway heading to the border. It cost us 50 Cordoba each and left every hour.

We left San Juan around midday, which seemed to coincide with the end of the school day. Half way through our journey the bus was overcome with tiny uniformed children who seemed to slot into every nook left free. Older kids organised the younger, helping them on and off the bus and looking out for their stops. When it was time for us to get off, we had to squeeze our way through, opting to leave through the emergency backdoor rather than bowl children over with our massive bags. We had tried to leave the bus slightly earlier (feeling rather claustrophobic), but the locals and Ayudante were having none of it after the learned where we were heading.

It was a twenty minute wait for our second bus. This bus also cost us 50 cordoba and took us all the way to the border... well almost. The bus station is inexplicably located a 10 minute walk away from the border building - we found our way by following the stream of locals. The migrant control building was huge, stuffy and filled with a line of people waiting for their turn to get stamped out. As we entered the building we paid $1 each, receiving a slip of paper in exchange. I'm pretty sure this is a small scam as no one was interested in actually seeing the piece of paper after this point. Oh well.

After queueing for about 45 minutes, we made it to the border agent, paid our $3 each, received our stamps and were through to Customs. I'm not entirely sure what we weren't allowed to take out of Nicaragua but they insisted on scanning everyone's luggage.

Despite this all taking a rather long amount of time, we weren't finished yet, we still needed to head to the Costa Rican migration office and do it all again.

We walked from Nicaragua to Costa Rica and although you might think the route would be simple, there was some roads that seemed to bypass the next migration office altogether so we had to pay attention and follow the signs.

The Costa Rican migration office was the fanciest we'd seen so far, it also (inexplicably) didn't have much of a line. I'm not sure where everyone else went, but if their disappearance between one office and the next saved us some time, so be it. The guard here was a lot more thorough: Where were we going? Where were we staying? Did we have proof of exit? We answered their questions and we were quickly on our way. As we didn't actually know when we were leaving we had brought a refundable return bus ticket to Nicaragua which we cancelled as soon as we were through.

Following the road around we found two money exchange guys waiting on the road. Once again, their rate wasn't exactly market value but we needed some Colones for our bus so we had to take it.

Rather than a rustic chicken bus situation we were expecting to find, the only transport we could see was coaches. Although coaches are far more comfortable, safe and reliable than their rickety cousins, they also lack a sense of adventure and for that we were disappointed. The coach we needed was also 1900 colones each and would only get us as far as Liberia - much more expensive than we were used to!

We arrived in Liberia at 5pm. It wasn't our true destination but an overnight stopping point along the way. Transport in Costa Rica isn't as frequent as we had been used it and getting to La Fortuna would take another 3 hours the next day.