Author: ajgaines

Another day. Another Central American border crossing. Got up in San Juan del sur and headed out. I was feeling itchy as I usually feel on border crossing day, like something will go wrong. I was mostly worried about the insurance which I most certainly did not have for a long while, and most certainly was supposed to have(it was impossible to renew online).

I headed towards the border but stopped at my favorite food place first where they have the most tender and garlicky chicken in the world and cheesecakeeeee. Nicafe.

The border crossing ended up being pretty simple. To leave Nicaragua they handed me an exit paper that I filled out and thank god they didn’t check insurance.

Then I went to the immigration building where I needed to get 3 signatures on that document. One from the aduana, one from aduana police and 1 from reg police or something like that. I just had to ask the baggage search lady to stop watching her marvel movie before she would sign the paper.

She grunted, asked me if I had a drone and told me to get lost. I ran into 2 nice Canadian guys that were crossing the border on motorcycles as well. I helped translate for them and basically just went through the whole process with them to help them out as they spoke no Spanish.

Make sure you get an exit stamp before you leave as they did not give me one, I forgot to check, and they gave me shit when I tried to leave out of the gate.

I then arrived at the CR side where you first need to get through the aduana. There was a big line and it took a bit of sweating to get through. The Canadian guys started telling some of their riding stories on their long road down and how they were headed for Lima while we waited in line.

They didn’t speak a lick of Spanish so I became their guide. After getting the entrance stamp we headed to a little hut where the lady wanted to see everything. License, title, registration passport and wanted a copy of everything.

She then made a document and stapled the copies to it and sent us down the road 100 meters to another aduana building. We entered and bought insurance. The minimum was 90 days and cost $34.

Then we had to walk outside to get a copy of the entrance stamp to Costa Rica. We handed everything again to the aduana guy and he gave us our 90 day temporary import permit

Once we got through the Canadian guys said they would follow me to the hostel I was staying at in Liberia, Costa Rica. A place that only costs $10 per night, Hostel Doredo. I knew 2 of my friends from Ometepe would be there so I wanted to head there. An hour of riding in the rain and we arrived soaking wet.

I found Rikke and Jonah and we went to eat some Pollolandia in town, the most typical Central American fried chicken place. It wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I had been seeing it for so long. There was no crunch at all in the breading.

We walked around Liberia and Costa Rican vibes began to set in. There’s clearly more money in Costa Rica. There’s international businesses on the street and people have nice things. It was clear we had left the more intense poverty of Nicaragua.

We then played monopoly go and other card games. Rikke trashed me at monopoly go time and time again. A great day full of great people!