Travel from Costa Rica to Colombia by road: Is it possible?

Many people have come to ask me as a travel agent, how they can go from Costa Rica to Colombia by car or bus. All Central America is connected by a road call Panamerican Highway. It pass through all countries in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. It stops in Panama when it gets closer to the frontier with Colombia. The so called "Tapon de Darien" is a very dense jungle with an immense value in biodiversity. Although some Colombian President such as Alvaro Uribe, have mentioned the necessity of creating a road that communicates Panama with Colombia, but many sectors of the population are opposed to that ideas because of many reasons. Some of those reasons are the environmental damage that the construction of a road in that area may have, and the increased risk of having non wanted immigration to Panama, among others.

The first and more comfortable option is to flight from Panama or Costa Rica to Colombia (the available airlines are Avianca and Copa). The flights range between $300 and $450 per person depending on the season.

The second option is to get a Boat Tour: there are some boats transporting goods from Colon (Panama) to Cartagena, or from Panama to Buenaventura, but there´s no regular service. There is also sailboat transportation to Colombia, which offers top quality service at a high price that will make the distance an intense and beautiful trip to the Colombian coasts.

If you really want to go by car, there must be a ship that moves your car from Panama (Colon) to Cartagena (Colombia). The price tag could be very high, and I think it won’t be worthy.

In any case, you should plane your vacation carefully or at least have a lot of time to spare since the ship or car option will require of special arrangements and information hunting.

I hope this information is useful for you travelers.