Hostal los Chamos

Our reservation had been made a month ahead, but they canceled it on the day we arrived and left us with nowhere to stay. They tried to blame Booking, even though I’d messaged the hostel the day before to say we’d arrive that day and got no reply. They canceled without telling us at all. Totally unacceptable.

We did make our 9 pm flight, and the airport was quiet enough that I wasn’t terribly stressed, but the trip took much longer than the six hours we’d been told. We left the hostel at 09:50 and reached San José airport at 19:00. Los Chamos can’t control immigration lines or road traffic, so I’m not sure another company would have been much faster, but they may need to give a more realistic estimate. We were traveling on a Monday morning, which may have been busier. Passport control, bag checks, and exit fee payments took 2.5 hours. The drive from the border to SJO took another five hours, including a 20 minute restaurant stop. Before that, we paid $35 for a direct private taxi from the hostel to the Costa Rica border, about 45 minutes. At a cafe near the border, we waited an hour for a large coach with AC and a toilet. It took us through the border and on to San Jose. It was definitely a shuttle, not a public bus as some people have said, though I’m not sure why we had to wait so long. Give yourself plenty of time if you have a flight.

The hostel’s shuttle to Costa Rica was the worst experience I’ve had in a long time. There were five of us, some booked for Liberia and others for San Jose. When we paid, we were told we’d stay in the same vehicle all the way, with our bags scanned at the border and then the shuttle taking us to our different destinations after immigration. Instead, they dropped us in a parking lot at the border and said to wait 45 minutes for a bus. When I called, they insisted they’d told us this at purchase, which was completely untrue. None of the five of us had been given that information. They were rude and evasive. Then they said there’d be a shuttle on the other side of the border, but that turned out to be false too. I tried calling again and they didn’t answer. I cannot recommend this service under any circumstances. And this in an otherwise wonderful country.

The $30 shuttle to Liberia left us at the border instead of taking us all the way to our destinations, so I can’t recommend it. After a 1.5 hour drive to the Nicaraguan border, we waited about an hour, then got on a Tica bus to migration. After clearing migration, we boarded again, handed a worker our passports and onward travel proof, and continued to the Costa Rican border. We then waited three hours in front of the Tica bus to get our passports back. The person leading our group took me to a local bus and said it would go to Liberia, but its line was three hours long. Everyone else was going to San Jose and had to buy $20 tickets for a slightly nicer city bus.