Day 5 - Border Crossing From Hell

On Wednesday we went from our stop on the Pacific back over the continental divide and then faced the biggest challenge of the entire trip - crossing the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border.

First...beautiful scenery leaving the Pacific side (somewhere outside San Juan del Sur)




Climbing the long 5% grade before descending back to Lake Nicaragua


It was very windy on the lake side, but there were more cows!  Cows in Nicaragua are very free-range...like they'll just walk across the road in front of you if they feel like it!  We nearly hit one with the bus our first day here.


This is the Nicaragua side of the border.  We watched busloads of people pull up and then leave again. You just sort of hand your passport over and wait indefinitely with no clear process.


2 hours later, we were crossing the border - despite the fact that our bus with luggage and bikes hadn't been allowed to leave Nicaragua yet, we thought the biggest hurdle of the day was over!

In fact, we still had to process paperwork on the Costa Rican side of the border.  And then wait for our bus/bikes to make it through both sets of paperwork.  So we waited...

And waited some more.  In face, we waited FIVE HOURS on the Costa Rican side before we finally hit the road.  Over seven hours total spent crossing the border.  These two countries don't especially like each other so they try to f*ck with each other at every opportunity.  Lucky us.  It also meant we had to skip our 2nd planned ride of the day.

By the time we reached our awesome hotel-on-a-cattle-ranch in Costa Rica, it was after dark and we barely had time to shower and eat before bed.

Shower frog

 Ride map/profile from the day