Dancing with the officials

Playas del Coco, Costa Rica

Yesterday, all day, was used to check into Costa Rica. In the company of two other cruising boat crews, we started at 8AM and finished at 4PM.



Sine Timore at anchor at Playas del Coco

First, we travelled to the Port Captain to tell him we were there, drop off copies of our passports, boat registration, exit zarpe from Nicaragua and a crew list, and obtain some new paperwork for delivery to Immigration. A short walk, maybe 1/2 km, took us to the Immigration office where we dropped off more copies of all of our documents, then filled in much paperwork and gave up our passports.
We returned to Immigration an hour later to pick up our passports with our 90-day visas and some extra copies for the Port Captain and Aduana (Customs). We walked back to the Port Captain's office and handed in our new paperwork, then were told we had to take a customs officer out to inspect each boat. As ours was the largest dinghy available, it fell to me to ferry the two persons to each boat in turn, where very lengthy reports were completed and we filled in some additional forms as well - this operation took us until early afternoon. Due to the launch of the dinghy through the surf, the officers got a little wet - not much I could do about it as they were unwilling to actually help with the launching itself.

Playas del Coco town

Back at the Port Captain's office, we handed in our copies of the inspection reports, then waited for a long time until the reports could be properly typed up and signed. Then it was off to the Aduana office, which is located near the Liberia airport. As we were running out of time in order to finish this procedure before the office closed, we hired a taxi to take us to the office and back. Once we got there, we had to wait for the same officer that did the inspection to drive to the airport and then laboriously enter all of the information into the computer. After handing over more copies of all of our documentation, we received a new piece of paper allowing us to keep the boat in the country for 90 days. As far as we know, we are now legally in Costa Rica.

I should note that, because of security concerns here, we had to take our dingy oars and gas tank with us wherever we went - left unattended would almost guarantee that they would go missing.. We were able to persuade one of the beach-side restaurants to store our belongings in their closet, in return for having breakfast at their premises.

Today, we went to the Port Captain's office once more, this time in order to get a "National zarpe" allowing us to travel to Golfito in southern Costa Rica, making as many stops as we want along the way.  Golfito is where we will have to check out of the country before heading for Panama.

Right now the weather has really mellowed.  Nice light breezes in the anchorage and a pretty mild surf to land and launch the dinghy.  This pattern is forecast to last for a few days, so we are hoping to make some significant progress down the coast, starting tomorrow.  We have obtained an internet chip that may or may not let us connect to the internet along the way.  Up until now we have been forced to use one of the local bar's Wifi connection.

BTW: It is still pretty warm and humid but we think it is actually a bit cooler than it was in Nicaragua.  I seems quite pleasant in the mornings when we wake up.

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