The Paquera to Punteras Ferry

The Gulf of Nicoya is Costa Rica’s main fishing ground, home to approximately 2000 licensed artisanal fishermen who work these waters in small motorized pangas. The 70-minute ferry crossing between Paquera and Puntarenas cuts through the heart of this maritime world, where dolphins frequently swim alongside the ship and fishing boats dot the horizon. Senior citizens ride free, just flash an ID at the ticket counter.

The gulf runs on two overlapping schedules that rarely acknowledge each other. Fishermen leave before dawn in boats built for cargo, not comfort, working waters that have supported roughly 2,000 licensed households for generations. A few hours later, the ferry pushes off carrying tourists in flip-flops toward beaches the fishermen have no particular reason to visit. The two groups share the same eleven nautical miles of water, the same dolphins, the same horizon, and almost nothing else. Costa Rica’s free senior fare, meanwhile, applies equally to a retired panga captain and a retired tourist, which may be the only place in the entire arrangement where the two economies are treated as exactly equal.