Those driving to Nosara lately have seen a lot of road construction crews at work and are amazed at how smooth the roads are between the Samara gas station (bomba) and Nosara. The work is the first stage of what will become paved hiway all the way to Nosara.
This progress was noted in the May 21 issue of AM Costa Rica, the free online English-language news organization. The writer may be exaggerating the difficulty of travel to Nosara, but people really do love it here. The paved road to Nicoya has been almost completely resurfaced, and the roads to Liberia or San Jose are better maintained than ever.
Here’s the article as it appeared in its entirety:

“Nosara road work perhaps a hint of things to come”

A visitor really has to love Nosara to get there. The main route is a gravel, mostly dirt road bisected by runoff ditches and dotted with mud holes. Frequently in the rainy season only buses and large trucks can traverse the route.

Many residents like the situation the way it is because bad roads retard development.

There is a change coming.

Workers are grading the road now, and the work looks like preparation for pavement, according to residents. Grading is done every year, and officials froze a contract to pave the Nosara road in mid-2007. The job was supposed to start last year.

“In some places it has been made wider and it is being graded to make the road drain properly,” said one resident. “They have official signs about men working and a real road crew to direct traffic, which we’ve not seen before.”

But because the rainy season is here, most residents doubt that an asphalt job can be done until at least December. The route is a rocky 30 kms or about 19 miles. The central government has been promising asphalt since at least 1985.

Finding out for sure in the bureaucracy of the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes is daunting. The construction firm CASICA won a bid to do the job in May, 2007, in part because it
was the only company in the process that had a certified laboratory to keep track of road work. However, a new bid process was called for to include companies that did not maintain a certified lab, said Pedro Castro, vice minister, at the time.

This is only half of the story. In the planning stages for the Pacific coast community is a new $60 million highway project that will include seven bridges. The road will more or less follow the path of another seasonal gravel road that leads from Sámara to Playa Garza and Nosara. It will be about 40 kms or 25 miles.

This is one of the projects that is on the ministry’s wish list for Guanacaste.

The current gravel road cannot be used during the rainy season or when there is high water in the many rivers. Motorists now have to ford the rivers and streams. The road parallels the coastline.

The $60 million price tag may seem excessive, but if the job is done it will open up a section of Pacific coast property that has been a backwater. Sámara, which is further south on the Nicoya Peninsula Pacific coast already is connected to the business center and community of Nicoya with an all-weather, hard surface road.

Planners also are drafting designs for a 40-km (25-mile) stretch between Santa Cruz and Santa Bárbara as well as doing preliminary sketches for a Sardinal-Potrero road that will connect with the Golfo de Papagayo.

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