Costa Rica: Bike Storage in San Jose

Dec 2025 |

I left my bike stored at Almacen Fiscal near San Jose airport for 3 weeks over the Xmas season 2025. This was a cost-effective, safe, and fairly easy process.

Sourcing a place to store my bike

I decided I would return to BC for the Xmas season. So I needed to organise a place to store my bike. Apparently, Costa Rica and Panama are the 2 countries in Central America where you can easily cancel your TIP and leave your bike for up to 1 year. I chose Costa Rica and booked a flight out of San Jose. Through rider groups and Google, I learned of Almacen Fiscal "Coco", a bonded warehouse located at the San Jose airport. I got in touch with them via Whatsapp and made arrangements to drop my bike.

Dropping off my bike

The airport is about 1 hour from central San Jose, a ride that travels against the horrifying traffic jam into the city (thank god). From the airport terminal, you ride down to the far end of the runway to the warehouse.

At the gate, I was met by security and parked my bike. They directed me to the warehouse entrance, where a there was some confusion regarding whether I was permanently importing my bike or temporarily storing it. Once that was resolved, I rode my T7 to the back of the warehouse, to an area with some adventure bikes, a couple looking abandoned and seriously caked in dust.

Next, I walked 100m to anotherr building to process my TIP cancellation and other paperwork. A friendly English-speaking executive came down to explain what was happening, told me to fill in some forms, and wait until called to the counter. After about 30 mins I was called up, processed the papers, and handed over my keys.

I was then told to wait for the Customs officer to arrive, their office was upstairs. They were "having breakfast". I waited about 90 minutes, then was called upstairs for another round of paperwork and stamps, my TIP was cancelled.

I then returned to my bike and finished organising my luggage and tankbag which I was leaving on the bike. Then covered and locked it. Leaving the luggage on may not be a great idea, but I did it anyway. Some of the other bikes looked like they had taken steps to secure everything.

As it was still early in the day, I decided to walk back to the main terminal. Bad idea, as this was much further than I expected. From there i took an Uber back to my AirBnB in San Jose.

Collecting my bike

On Jan 2, I returned to Almancen Fiscal. After checking in at the gate, the first thing I did was check my bike - and everything was just as I'd left it.

Next, I proceeded to the Customs office to re-boot my TIP. Once again, the officer was not there. This time I waited 2 hours to get my docs processed. The fee for storage and cancelling/re-starting my TIP was less than $100.

After that, I had a couple of moments of chaos.

The first was with my bike key. At the Customs office, there is a massive wall of keys for vehicles in storage. I knew I had left my key, but I couldn't remember clearly when/where I had last seen it. The attendant and I looked all over the wall, but it wasn't there. After 45 minutes of stress, I went back to the main counter and asked about my key; it turned out they had my keys there, in a lock box.

Next, I got everything organized on my bike and was ready to leave, when I discovered the battery was stone-cold dead. Fortunately, the attendants deal with this issue a lot and had a portable jumper that got my bike going. An officer did a final check at the gate on the way out.

Final thoughts

Almacen Fiscal is a great place to leave your bike or vehicle for short or long-term storage. I highly recommend them.

My only consideration was that, technically, I didn't need to leave my bike in a bonded storage warehouse as I was only away for 3 weeks. I could have just parked it somewhere. But the peace of mind of having it in a secure indoor warehouse was well worth it.

Warehouse: Almacen Fiscal el Coco Oficial

Price: ~$100 for 3 weeks of storage and TIP cancellation/re-start