72 Hours, Crossing the Border into Costa Rica

I hear this question on a regular basis. I hear it so much, that I am going to start charging $100 for each time I am asked this question.

Am I required to stay 72 hours out of the country prior to reentering? The answer is no, you are not required to stay of out the country for 72 hours. How people got this idea?

Permits for foreign vehicles

Currently, if you bring a vehicle into Costa Rica from another country (this comment does not include any transaction related to people who are in the business of importing vehicles, the comment refers to the lay person who is bringing a car) the Servicio Nacional de Aduanas or SNA (Costa Rican Customs) will only give you a 90 day permit to bring the vehicle into the country, upon which you have two options: you either get the vehicle out of the country or you pay the taxes register the vehicle in Costa Rica. If you take the vehicle out of the country, you are not allowed to bring it back into Costa Rica within three months.

Previously, people where allowed to bring their vehicles back once the vehicles had been out of the country for 72 hours. And as you can imagine, there were droves of ticos bringing cars from the US and doing border runs every three months to re-permit their vehicles back into Costa Rica and drive them for another three months. The SNA had enough of this and then put in place a couple of restrictions, on the one hand, the permits to bring a vehicle to Costa Rica for three months will not be applicable to ticos living in Costa Rica (while ticos living abroad could get a permit for their foreign cars to be in CR for three months), and on the other hand, the minimum amount of time required for the vehicle to be out of the country was increased from 72 hours to three months. These restrictions were created to prevent ticos from abusing that loophole in the system.

And thus, the requirement to be out of the country for 72 hours was applicable to vehicles, not to people. However, it seems that this requirement for the vehicles to stay out of the country stuck to people’s people to a degree that this misconception endures today.

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Crossing Two Borders

If you are planning on crossing the border to Nicaragua, you need to bear in mind that you are actually crossing two borders not just one. You are crossing the Costa Rican border and you are also crossing the Nicaraguan border. And believe me, there are two borders, I have been stuck in the middle of both.

I was driving the Panamerican Highway with my late father in 2010. We started the drive in Chicago, and drove through the Midwest all the way to Arizona to meet with my sisters Sara and Mila who both lived in Phoenix at the time. My father and I crossed the border into Mexico through Tucson. It took us five days to go through Mexico. We were able to navigate all of the border crossings from Mexico to Nicaragua with no problems, after all I am an attorney I could silvertongue myself out of every trouble. It would take us on average a couple of hours to check out on one border and check in at the other, but when we got to Costa Rica, it took us 22 hours to be allowed into Costa Rica. Why? Well, I am a tico bringing a foreign car into Costa Rica. We got out of the Nicaraguan customs and immigration and got to the Costa Rican checkpoint at 10 am,  they refused to let me in, and the customs offices closed at six PM and my dad and I were stuck in no-man’s land without being able to get into Costa Rica or allowed back into Nicaragua, I was allowed into Costa Rica at eight AM next day after I threaten to put the director in Jail for not fulfilling his legal obligations.

The point of the of the story is that you need to cross two borders, and while Costa Rica does not have a minimum amount of time required for you to be out of the country, the other country may have it. You can get out and back into Costa Rica within 15 minutes, as far as Costa Rican laws are concerned, that is not a problem. However, Panama or Nicaragua may require you to stay longer.

I have reviewed both immigration laws from Nicaragua and Panama and neither of those regulations required you to be in those countries for at least 72 hours. However, the immigration officers have the discretionary power to not let you in or not let you out, as in any other country, and thus, it depends on the discretion (mood) of the immigration officer of either of those countries to require you to stay longer in the country.

This one time I was crossing the border into Panama through Paso Canoas to assist a client who was getting into Costa Rica. In that particular occasion, I was required to get into Panama to pick up my client and to get back to Costa Rica. Well, I was the only one not allowed out of Panama. The immigration officer at the Panamanian border told me that I was required to be in Panama for at least three days, I pulled out the Panamanian Immigration Law out of my phone and showed to the person at the window that there was not such a requirement in Panamanian law, and he either let me out of Panama or I was going to put him in jail for abuse of authority, so basically I threw a temper tantrum [legal style].  The frazzled immigration officer called the commander out of headquarters in Chorrillos (wherever the hell that was) and I was put on the phone with him, who at the end apologized and told me to come back in three hours. So, then my wife and I got in the car and drove to Golfito for lunch and got back in three hours to pick up our passports to be let out of Panama and into Costa Rica. The crazy part of the story is that whole time I was physically in Costa Rica while I was legally in Panama.

In a nutshell, under Costa Rican law, you are not required to be out of the country for 72 hours, you can check in to Costa Rica as soon as you check out of the other country. However, you also need to take into consideration whether the other country is going to let you out, and not everybody can throw a temper tantrum the way I do.