At 8:45 am we piled into an Uber and headed off to the public bus terminal in Liberia. We checked around to see if we needed to buy bus tickets ahead of time but were told they could be purchased on the bus. We then relaxed while we waited for our bus to arrive.  Soon we noticed a line starting to form, and after a few questions we were informed that it is the one we wanted to be in so we rushed in to claim our spot. Shortly after some brakes squeezed in the climbing heat and we got our four seats, then proceeded to wait around again for the bus to fill right up to standing room only. Once on our way, this leg of the journey to the border took one and a half hours, with multiple stops along the way picking up and dropping off anyone that had a destination. 

We reached the border named Panas Blancas where we now needed to navigate our way through the formalities. Everyone was very friendly, helping us figure out where we needed to go and what to do next. 

First, we arrived at the immigration office to stamp out. Because we have kids we were guided to a separate side to skip the line. However we hadn’t filled out the online export tax to leave the country. This cannot be done in person at the window, but there are a few options. 

1. Fill it out online right there from your cell and pay $8 online fee
2. Go into the building and use their machine to complete it and pay $8 online fee
3. The guys with the Fanny packs outside will approach you and take care of it all for you. You give them your passport and they will fill it out and print it out for you. Their cost is $10 US cash.

For us, we chose option 3, as it was quick and easy. We also exchanged a bit of money with them as well just so we would have some local cash, the Cordoba, for the bus and lunch on the other side. 

We then went inside the building, through immigration and stamped out within minutes. It was now time to walk the 300 metres across to Nicaragua. On route you will have to show your passports three times, twice before you arrive at the Nicaragua immigration office, and once about 50 metres after you exit. This crossing through no-mans-land is super busy with huge transport trucks. We found ourselves weaving back and forth between them in a rather chaotic manor. Kind of a strange setup really for us meandering amongst the vehicles as the passport checks were on either side of the road.

Once we arrived at the immigration office we stood in-line outside the building with the full sun beating down on us for around 15 mins. After this, we were inside the building for our continued wait. This process seemed to take forever as no one seemed in a hurry here. This is where we spent the majority of our time crossing the border. I think once we handed over our passports it took over 15 minutes for the official to stamp us in. 

The things you need to have here are:

• Passport
• Proof of destination accommodations along with the address and phone number
• $10 US tourist tax
• $3 US entry fee.

Try to have exact dollar amount as we did hear sometimes they don’t give change.

Once this was complete we then proceeded to put our bags through an X-ray scanner then we were free to proceed into the country. From here we walked another 50 metres where we had to show our passports one last time.  They were looking for passport stamp and proof of tourist tax payment. After this we continued to walk another 200 metres to all the awaiting buses on the left hand side of the road. Again, here everyone was very friendly and guided us to the correct bus to get on. As our luck would have it, the bus left as soon as we boarded and on our way to Rivas, San Jorge then Ometepe Island we go.

Check out our preceding days at La Fortuna or our continuing location of Ometepe Island.

Or have a look at other Central American boarder crossings like:

• Panama to Costa Rica