How To Get From San Juan del Sur to La Fortuna
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Up until San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua, we were opting mainly to get shared shuttles over public transport, mostly for the convenience of it picking you up and dropping you off directly at your accommodation.
When it came to us wanting to go between San Juan and La Fortuna we assumed just like everywhere else we could just book a shuttle. We really struggled to find anyone offering this journey and one company we asked quoted us $300 for a private shuttle which we weren’t not going to do.
So that left us with needing to find out what the public transport options were and our accommodation wasn’t the most helpful and also my Google research lead me to be even more confused. But luckily after speaking to a few people that had already done this journey, we had a clear idea of where to head.
In the end, our total journey was about 12 hours and it ran pretty smoothly after all the initial panic we had, it was also pretty budget friendly costing us $44 for 2 people.
Given how difficult I found it was to find information about this route, I thought I would share our journey between San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua to La Fortuna, Costa Rica. Our journey was taken in Feb 2023.
San Juan Del Sur to Peñas Blancas
San Juan del Sur is only a 45-minute drive to the border at Peñas Blancas, so we opted to get a taxi to make things a little bit easier. There are plenty of taxis floating around the centre of San Juan del Sur so you won’t have a problem finding one, it cost $25 for the two of us and we set off around 8 in the morning.
If you wanted to save some more money on this one you can opt to get the public bus from San Juan del Sur to Rivas and change buses from Rivas to Peñas Blancas. I’m unsure of the timings and cost of this route, however.
Exiting Nicaragua
It was pretty simple to get stamped out of Nicaragua, once the taxi dropped us we were pointed in the right direction of the Nicaraguan immigration office. We had to pay a $4 exit fee each in total, strangely $1 to enter the building and then $3 at the immigration desk. You then send your bags through the scanners and just like that you’ve left Nicaragua.
We didn’t have to queue at all to leave Nicaragua, we flew straight through arrived at about 8:45 and were on the other side before 9.
Entering Costa Rica
Once you leave the Nicaraguan office you will see the signs for Costa Rica, basically, cross over to the right then head straight down the road with the massive queue of trucks and you can’t miss it. You’ll see a few buildings when you get to the Costa Rica border, the one you need is the big white one on the left if you're not sure just ask, that’s what we did and everyone was super helpful.
I was expecting a rather large queue to get stamped into Costa Rica, but we didn’t wait more than 10 minutes before getting to the immigration desk, all in all, we had left Nicaragua and entered Costa Rica by 9:30.
I had also expected a lot more questions from the immigration officer as we were told Costa Rica was very strict, especially with proof of onward travel. We had booked a bus trip with free cancellation on Bookaway as we didn’t have our actual onward travel arranged yet. But we didn’t get asked for any of this, he only asked where we were staying. I would still recommend having proof of onward travel though because most other people we know were asked for it.
It’s worth noting throughout the day the queue for immigration got a LOT bigger, I would say around 11 the queue looked like it was longer than an hour. So just to be on the safe side and so you don’t miss your public bus connection I would leave an hour or 2 to cross the border.
There is no fee to enter Costa Rica and with a British passport, we got given 90 days on arrival without having to fill out any forms or declarations prior to entrance.
Peñas Blancas to La Fortuna
Now this is where the real fun started for us as we were raring and ready to head to La Fortuna at 9:30 but there is only one public bus a day at 2:30. This meant 5 hours just waiting around at the border, so really there’s no need to set off from San Juan as early as we did, but hey ho.
You can buy the bus tickets at the green hut opposite the immigration office, see the photo above for reference. The bus ticket cost us $8 dollars each and you can pay in dollars or colones. Your bus ticket will say San Carlos and the sign of the bus will most likely say San Carlos or Upala. It’s pretty obvious where all the buses stop as there are buses in and out of the area all day, so you won’t miss it.
The journey took about 4 and a half hours and stopped to pick up so many people, at points, there were many people squished standing up in the aisle, safe to say we were happy to have got seats.
Around 7ish the bus stopped and the driver told us it was the stop for La Fortuna, but it was really just the side of the road. Thankfully there were a few other people that got off at the same point and a lovely girl told us we could wait on the corner of the road and a public bus would be there shortly to drive us the 15-minute journey to the centre of La Fortuna, it cost us $3 for the 2 of us. The final bus will drop you off at the bus station just outside the supermarket Mega Super in La Fortuna.
Other Helpful Tips
I believe you can also do this route via Liberia, it just involves a lot more changes and that stressed me out too much.
The day was a really long one and there wasn’t a real opportunity to buy food, so bring plenty of snacks and water. And don’t forget your portable charger.
A really useful website for bus timetables in Costa Rica is called The Bus in Costa Rica. So far for us the timings have been accurate, but if you can I would always try double-check with a local or your accommodation.
All though I was a little worried about doing this journey, especially as we attempted it on a Sunday it ended up working perfectly and was pretty smooth sailing. Other than when it started raining on the bus, don’t sit by a broken window people.
As always if you have any questions, feel free to ask away.
