Entering Costa Rica

The border crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica went very smoothly!

There were local bus vendors selling tickets to various places, so we asked around about how best to get to La Fortuna. There was one vendor selling tickets direct to a town called El Tanque, which is only a 10 minute taxi away from La Fortuna! The only issue was that this bus didn't leave until 2:30pm, which was over 4 hours away. However, we thought best to play it safe and wait around for this bus rather than catch 4 further unscheduled buses that might not exist.

We also realised at this point that we'd (I'd) left our untouched food bag containing our breakfast and lunch at Nicaraguan passport control. So I set off on a mission to retrieve the bag.

The border police for both countries were happy for me to go back and have a look but without success, the bag couldn't be found. So we bought a pack of ginger biscuits, a lemonade and a Powerade from a nearby vendor.

After a long wait our bus finally came! We stopped off and picked up some snacks. The legroom was terrible so about halfway through me and Dan split up to give each other more space. I ended up sitting across from an 18 year old local guy who loved football. So we tried to have a conversation half in terrible Spanish and half in terrible English which went okay actually!

We then arrived at El Tanque and caught an Uber to La Fortuna. Upon arrival at our hostel we found 🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨 a ball court with a FOOTBALL!!!!! The hostel also has a fully equipped kitchen, lots of social spaces and our room is nice and air conditioned too, so this was nice to be greeted with after a long day.

We nipped to the supermarket and made, you guessed it, tuna pasta for dinner. Our first impressions of La Fortuna are good! Now time for some much needed sleep.Read more