A daftly phrased subject, perhaps. We are presentlyset to fly out of PC after two weeks in Nic/CR. We are toying with changing that flight to San Jose, as it might be more convenient. However, from what I can see, you can hop on a bus to PC from most of southern CR and get there in under 24 hours, and PC seems a nice place to visit for the night. We will probably by in NW CR (arenal etc) and perhaps on the southern Carribean coast. Any thoughts?

Ticabus drives from San Jose to Panama, I am sure you can jump on the bus in the south of Costa Rica (but most often you need reservations). If you are already on the caribbean side you can travel to Bocas del Toro and go by bus from there to Panama City.

You mean in the Next 24 hrs? Its about 4 hours from San Jose to Sixola, the Carribean Panama border, then another hour or so to Bocas, not counting waiting for the next boat. From Bocas its a pretty cheap flight to PC, maybe $60. You can make the flight reservations over the phone.

If your thinking of going from San Jose to Panama city for the night? Umm....whats a long haul...thats a long haul.
From PV area on Caribe side to PC, thats a long haul, wither way, a all day journey...

But it sounds like a journey possible in 24 hours, yes? To clarify, we have a ticket out of Panama City in three weeks, and wondered whether, if we spend longer than we plan in CR, we could make it from CR to PC in a day. Hope that is clear ish. Thanks for the advice, very much.
i have taken a bus from Panama City to San Jose and i believe it was 12 hours. if you can afford it, i would reccommend flying to panama city instead or changing your outbound flight to leave from costa rica. it is doable, but it seems like a lot of travel and spending 12 hours on the bus is not that interesting.

Thanks for that. We had considered changing our flight, but it will cost $200, and we should have a day or two to spend getting to PC. I see one route as CR Carib coast to Bocas then fly to PC. Any other ideas? Somewhere SW in CR, then to David, then on to PC?
It's true if you take a bus just over the border -- to either Changuinola (the town on the mainland near Bocas), Bocas or David, you can fly cheaply (about $60) on a Panamanian domestic flight. And then you'd get to see something else. Changuinola there's nothing to see but Bocas is great and I've heard good things about the area around David.
Edited by: Irene_Adler

You can now fly from San Jose to either Bocas or to David... so it depends on where you are... check out www.flyairpanama.com and www.natureair.com for times and fares...
The bus is 15 to 18 hours from San Jose to Panama City - relatively comfortable although usually extremely cold.
Cheers,
Andrew