"Tica Bus from Granada (Nicaragua) to San José" San José Transportation Tip by mircaskirca

Tica Bus and Transnica have a few daily buses from Nicaragua to Costa Rica. They leave Granada from two different bus terminals on Avenida Elena Arellano. Both have first class buses and offer about the same service. There is another company, King Quality, which seems to have a slightly better service but the price is almost double. After a little consideration I decided for Tica Bus. I was traveling on 29 December. In the time around Christmas and the New Year a lot of people travel so the buses get full quickly. I booked almost 10 days in advance at Tica Bus office. From Granada to San José it was 23 US $. To my surprise, most of the seats were already booked. Happy to have my bus ticket to Costa Rica safely in a pocket, I did not need to worry about this anymore.

I took a 7am bus which arrived from Managua with a little delay. All the passengers had to sign in at Tica Bus office before departure. We crossed the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica at Peñas Blancas. That was quite an experience. First we stopped on Nicaraguan side and there were already a lot of buses. The driver took our passports and we had to wait until the border formalities were done. Locals were running around trying to change different currencies (US dollars, cordobas and colones), selling coffee and various snacks. There was also the toilet. I changed the remains of cordobas into colones and had a coffee. It took even longer on the side of Costa Rica. The line of people waiting to get their passports stamped looked endless, and there was another one for bag control.

All went fine and after almost three hours we were on the bus again heading to San José. The whole journey from Granada to San José should take about eight hours but we had about two hours delay and only arrived at 5pm. From the terminal I took a taxi to Hostel Pangea where I was going to overnight. Taxi driver was very friendly. I asked him if there was an ATM where I could withdraw some money that I needed and he stopped at the petrol station on the way to the hostel. For the taxi I paid 5.000 colones (December 2010).

Mode: TO
Type: Bus
Website: http://www.ticabus.com/