Rio Sereno Border Crossing: Panama/Costa Rica
Monday, January 14th, 2008Turns out this is a super laid-back border crossing. Officials on both sides were friendly, helpful and knowledgeable about how to deal with non-locals. I only say this because I’d heard rumblings to the contrary. we caught a bus from Guadalupe/cerra punta to volcan. We told the bus driver we intended to travel to rio sereno, so when he saw that bus near volcan he stopped and made sure we got on it. Otherwise the stop in volcan is at the 3-road cut-off.
The drive to rio sereno is windy and pretty and takes over an hour. All the locals (which is everyone) will get off at the town but the bus driver can continue a little ways to the “frontera” to get you closer. From there walk up the little hill where you will find the Panamanian immigration office: stamp, stamp. Then pass the costa Rican police building and next you will see the costa Rican office: stamp, stamp. Viola!
Now here is the challenge: there does not appear to be any public transport on the CR side since there is no town there. The closest is sabalito, about 5k away. But we were able to catch a ride in the back of a “transport de carga” truck to sabalito where we caught a bus to san vito. No problemo.
Now, lonely planet calls san vito a town settled by Italian with good Italian eateries and wine, etc. I don’t know if or when that was true, but it isn’t true now. There was nothing bad about the town and it was an OK place to spend the night since the only alternative from rio sereno is possibly to catch the bus to neilly, on the inter-american, and stay there. We did make it there in time to take a taxi to Wilson botanical garden ($4 taxi, $8 entrance fee) and this was pretty. Worth the $12? Yes if you are there and have a free afternoon but unless you did what I did – just crossed the border – I wouldn’t go out of my way.
But maybe my judgment is clouded because it was sometime on that afternoon that I lost my binoculars. I did track down the taxi driver to see if it was is his truck that I left him, but no luck. Now was my time to learn just how attached to them I was!! Bad timing, too: just before I head to the osa peninsula – costa rica’s rain forest gem. D’oh!
here is a quick video of the border
Peggy Rehm