San José Travel Forum

has anyone driven between costa rica and panama? i will be in san jose for a couple of weeks on business and would like to drive down to the panama canal and back over the weekend. is this possible to do without encountering problems with immigration in either country? does anyone know the airlines that fly this route? i checked kayak and they came up with 600usd, which is way too much. thanks, omax

Finding a rental company that will let you take a car across the border could be difficult. The below flight is powered by kayak.

http://www.pinpointtravel.com/s/flights.jsp?searchid=AfS_RTPiWzJlzK18geIT&completed=true

You could look into Tica Bus http://www.ticabus.com/ing_rutas_horarios_costa_rica.htm

Airlines:

COPA
TACA

check their websites.

Just realized that my flight info for you didn't go through. It is powered by Kayak and showed $375 on Taca Airlines. Below was another search. I just randomly picked dates.

http://wftc1.e-travel.com/plnext/TACA2/ValuePricer.action

There is no way you could go by land from San Jose CR to the Canal in one weekend. You would spend most of the weekend on a bus. You would need a minimum of 4 days. Your only option would be by plane.

I am not sure if you have every driven around in Costa Rica but the roads are terrible. It takes forever to get around because they are in such bad condition and it can be nerve racking. I am not sure about the condition in Panama. I thinkyou may find you would spend all of your time driving on that weekend trip. You might look into one of the small Costa Rica airlines to see if you can fly into Panama closer to your destination to save some time. I can't remember which one flies there. Check Sansa and Nature Air. One of them flys there.