When I was 9 months pregnant, I walked to Nicaragua from Costa Rica. Okay maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but our second stop, after embarking on our “journey to childbirth,” was Nicaragua… and yes it was on foot. Our first stop was checking into Finca Cabañas Cañas Castilla, a really cool rustic B&B situated on Río Sapoá near Peñas Blancas, which is where the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border is.
Because we are not yet residents of Costa Rica, we are required to leave the country every 90 days to renew our visas. Our visas had yet to expire, and wouldn’t be expiring until January 16th, so we had time, but we figured we should renew our visas prior to Soraya’s birth since she will not be able to leave the country for a while. The bureaucracy surrounding getting her birth certificate and passports is a little complicated, to say the least, and may take months for her to obtain her passports and therefore leave the country.
After spending the morning packing our car for our month-long journey, we left our home in Playa Flamingo at around 1PM on Saturday December 9th, 2017. We arrived at the family owned B&B at around 3PM. We relaxed in hammocks while listening to the flowing river for a little bit and debated whether we should head to Nicaragua that evening or first thing the next morning prior to heading to La Fortuna, our next stop. The friendly owner of the B&B advised us to go that evening to avoid long lines. She also informed us that she is authorized to have us pay departure taxes to her rather than at the border; doing this would allow us to skip one step at the border, therefore making our “border-run” a little faster. Since I was full-term pregnant, anything to make the border run faster sounded great. The last thing I wanted was for labor to start while we were in Nicaragua. We paid her $7 each, which is much less than the departure tax we paid at the airport when we flew to Nicaragua from Costa Rica in October. The taxes at the airport were at least $30 each. It felt a lot less exhausting when we flew to Nicaragua though… but that is probably because I was a lot less pregnant then.
Our “border-run” was smooth. We drove to the border, parked, and took an evening stroll to Nicaragua… via multiple immigration checkpoints. Once in Nicaragua, we spent about 10-minutes at the duty free shop, I bought a Lindt chocolate bar, then we headed back to Costa Rica. One of the not-official “helpers” hanging around the border advised us that we are required to stay in Nicaragua for at least 3-hours prior to heading back to CR and offered to help us by “talking” to one of the immigration officers who would let us in sooner at an extra $40. We were not aware of this rule before, nor had any of our experienced border-run friends mention this rule to us. We figured he was trying to make some extra cash from us. We had not done anything illegal, as far as we knew, so we did not feel like we needed to bribe anyone. We therefore declined his offer and went through immigration. It ended up being fine. They let us through without a question. We did find out later though, that the 3-hour rule is a thing… but no one ever follows it.
We walked back to Costa Rica by around 5 that evening. We were thankful that the B&B owner advised us to go that evening… Not only were there no lines, by the time we got there, all the immigration officers were over their work day…most were on their phones and barely questioned us. This was great since we have heard stories about immigration officers at the CR/Nicaragua border giving people a hard time when re-entering Costa Rica.
Even though our border run was a success, we did wish that we could spend a few nights in Nicaragua. We loved Rivas in Costa Esmeralda, Nicaragua when we visited in October. It’s clear that the country has so much to offer and we are looking forward to exploring it some more in the near future. The colonial city of Granada is of particular interest to us.
When we flew to Nicaragua in October, we stayed at Aqua Wellness Resort in the Emerald Coast. We went there during the “green” season (aka low-season); our rooms were therefore half of the regular price. We stayed in an oceanfront “tree-house” without a private plunge pool, but since the tree house next to ours did not have any guests, we were allowed to use that plunge pool. We had a lovely weekend at this establishment… mostly relaxing on the beach but we also hiked through a forest to Playa Gigante, which we learned is usually a hopping place, but it was clear that most establishments were significantly affected by Tropical Storm Nate, which had hit Costa Rica and Nicaragua a week or so prior. Here are some photos from our trip in October.
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