Nicaragua > Costa Rica: Penas Blancas

Feb 23
3 min read

Dec 2025 |

This was the worst border I experienced in Central America, taking nearly 6 hours to cross.

Riding to Penas Blancas

I started the day at San Juan del Sur, a 60-minute ride from the coast to the lake, then straight south to the borde (more about my stay in San Juan is here).

Nicaragua border

Nicaragua is a notoriously bad border, often described by Pan-American riders as the worst in Central America. I had entered at Los Manos and it was not as bad as I expected (read more here). And exiting at Penas Blancas was not so bad, though it was more discombobulated than Los Manos, due to its much larger size and many people crossing.

When I arrived, there were many buses and cars, and fairly long lines at immigration. But the line moved fairly fast and stamping out my passport took about 15 minutes.

After that, I needed to cancel my bike TIP. This required a bit of running around to different kiosks, with me doing some dumb gringo shit, like joining the wrong line for 15 minutes. This TIP cancellation process was about 45 minutes once I got on the right path.

The whole process of exiting myself and T7 from Nicaragua took about 1 hour. It all seemed fairly simple and efficient to me. Once done, I rode about 1km to the Costa Rica side.

Costa Rica border

I envisioned Costa Rica to be more developed and modern than the rest of Central America, with efficient border processes to match. Holy cow, was I wrong in regard to the border -- it was an absolute horror show of a crossing.

The first thing I saw was the line snaking outside the compound, and about 10 buses in the parking lot. I parked my bike, and walked to the end of the line, which was not covered, and stood in glaring sun. That massive long line took 3 hours before I reached an immigration officer. Seriously, the only other time I had an experience this bad was at Beijing airport in 1999 -- as one expected back then.

After passing through immigration, things didn't get any better importing my bike. Before getting a TIP at Customs, you need to purchase insurance. The insurance sales kiosk is not clearly marked, and not close to the Customs area. When I found it, I then learned insurance can only be purchased with local currency, credit cards are not accepted -- and I had no cash. And adding to the pandemonium, there were no tout/money changers around (like at every border from Mexico south); I guess they had been banished from the new (but highly inefficient) border post. I needed an ATM, but there were none at the immigration building. I ended up having to ride to another building, which has the only ATM at the border.

Now 4-hours into the border crossing process, with insurance in hand, I did the TIP, which requires you to line up at 2 windows that are side by side (one for TIP, one for payment? I can't remember, my brain was fried at that point). The windows and line are in the open, so once again I was standing in blazing sun. This process took another hour or so.

The whole immigration/bike import process took around 5 hours. A truly insane experience, and seriously bad optics in regards to Costa Rica.

The only postive at the border was running into (figuratively) a guy on a bicycle who I had met earlier at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. He is the only fellow traveller I had met in multiple places on my trip thus far.

Documents used Nicaragua: