If you are driving between San José and the Caribbean coast this morning, you cannot get through on Route 32. A one-kilometer (0.6-mile) stretch near kilometer 55, starting at La Unión de Guápiles and running east, is closed in both directions from 8 a.m. until noon today.
Nothing gets through in that window. Not San José to Limón, not Limón to San José, and not light vehicles squeezing past on the shoulder. The rest of the highway is open, but this single stretch cuts the road in half, so there is no way to drive around it once you are on the highway.
The closure is not roadwork or a landslide. Prosecutors from the Fiscalía Adjunta de Pococí asked for it so they can carry out an on-site procedure in a case involving alleged negligent injury, known in Costa Rican law as lesiones culposas. Investigators will place witnesses at exact points on the roadway and record their accounts of what happened there.
That is why the road has to be completely empty rather than reduced to one lane. Passing traffic would put investigators and witnesses standing in the road at real risk, and it would also make the measurements unreliable, since the whole point is to fix precise positions and sightlines. Officers from the Organismo de Investigación Judicial and the Fuerza Pública will hold the perimeter while the work is done.
If you need to reach the Caribbean side this morning, you are being pointed drivers toward two alternatives. One runs through Vara Blanca, over the mountains north of Heredia. The other goes through Turrialba on Route 10 and comes out at Siquirres.
Both take considerably longer than the direct highway, and both are mountain roads with tight curves and frequent fog. Give yourself a generous cushion if you have a flight, a ferry, or a tour to catch. Also worth knowing: when the Vara Blanca route is opened as a detour, transport authorities have often limited it to light vehicles only, so check the current restriction before you commit to it in anything larger.
One detail may trip up drivers who planned ahead. This closure was first announced for Saturday, August 29, and then moved up to today. If you rearranged your weekend around the original date, the Saturday plan appears to be off, though confirm before you rely on it.
Today’s closure lands on a highway that has already had a difficult month. Route 32 was shut repeatedly through mid-August as heavy rain saturated the slopes around Cerro Zurquí and sent material onto the roadway. It reopened around 10 a.m. on Monday after another round of landslides, and transport officials were examining whether those slides were driven by the rain or by the two earthquakes, magnitude 5.0 and 4.5, that shook San Isidro de Coronado before dawn that day.
That history is worth keeping in mind today as the closure is scheduled to lift at noon, but the Zurquí sector operates on its own logic, and a fresh slide there can close the road with no notice and no reopening estimate. Clearing the judicial closure does not guarantee a clear run to the coast.
Check the road status before you leave rather than after you are already climbing into the mountains. Transport authorities post updates as conditions change, and on a highway this prone to sudden closures, a few minutes of checking can save you several hours of backtracking.
