I left Costa Rica on Sunday morning along with a few others from the blogging workshop. I was dropped off at the airport in Liberia to wait for the local bus to town (it was late).

Taxi drivers offered to take me to town for $30, but since the local bus only cost $1, I figured it was worth the wait. Even if it was hot! I caught the bus along with a British girl, we stood in the back and talked about our travels til the bus arrived at the station.

The information desk was closed for lunch, but some helpful people told us which bus to take and where they would arrive. I only had about a half hour to wait. There were plenty of people selling drinks and snacks. Sliced mango with limes, banana chips, cashew nuts, sodas, and all sorts of sweets.

I met a young guy from England who was also going to SJDS and we decided to share a cab from the border. That would make it an easy decision to take a cab instead of dealing with more busses. 🙂

We left on the bus to the border at 1230 sharp. They put our luggage under the bus and off we went. This was the local bus, so we took a different route than I took on the Ticabus coming South. It stopped every so often for people getting on/off. It went through a lot of small towns and there was beautiful scenery to see along the way. No AC, but with the window open it was pretty nice with the breeze.

The bus dropped us off at the border (Penas Blancas) and we walked up to the immigration office. Made the mistake of not paying the exit fee beforehand (which I was informed there was none in Costa Rica- there IS). It cost $8 to leave. We had to go back along the road to one of the little houses to pay the fee and get our paperwork stamped. Then back in line for the officials to collect those papers and stamp our passports.

After completing the paperwork, we walked a few minutes over the border to Nicaragua. It was very simple to enter, we just paid $12 to the official and he stamped our passports. We were in!

We had already made a bargain with a taxi driver while we were walking in. He would take us both to SJDS and drop us at our hotels (different ones) for $25. Off we went! It was a nice ride and pretty quick. It only took a while to find my hotel since the driver wasn’t familiar with SJDS. We asked directions a couple of times (at least he had no problems with doing that!). I gave him a couple of dollars extra as a tip since I’m sure he wasn’t planning to take so long to find my hotel. It still only worked out to $14 for the ride. 🙂