If your drive west runs through Cambronero, plan on going another way for a while. The Ministry of Public Works and Transport says the temporary bridge on Route 1 took enough damage in Monday night’s crash that it cannot be repaired in place. It has to come out and a new one has to go in.
Officials estimate the crossing could stay closed for up to two months. Pablo Camacho, vice minister of infrastructure, put the cost of the replacement at close to ₡300 million, roughly $661,000 at the Central Bank reference sell rate. That changes the calculation for anyone traveling between the Central Valley and Puntarenas, the Nicoya Peninsula or Guanacaste. This is no longer a delay you wait out over a long weekend.
You have three ways around it, and the right one depends on what you drive. Route 27, the toll road between San José and Caldera, takes everything, including buses and tractor-trailers. It is the only alternate that heavy vehicles should be on, so expect it to be busier than usual in both directions and budget extra time even outside rush hour.
Route 3 over Monte del Aguacate works for cars, pickups and small trucks. Articulated vehicles should stay off it. The road climbs and descends through tight switchbacks with no room to swing a trailer, and a truck that gets stuck on a curve there closes the whole road for everyone behind it.
Light vehicles have a third option, the cantonal road between Río Jesús and Piedra Blanca. It is narrow and local, so treat it as a way to skip a queue rather than a highway substitute, and do not attempt it in heavy rain without checking conditions first.
The picture only became clear yesterday afternoon as crews pulled the trailer’s container off the structure around 2 p.m., which was the step that had to happen before anyone could assess the damage properly. Earlier that morning, Conavi director Mauricio Sojo had said engineers would draw up an inventory of the parts needing replacement and announce a timeline afterward. By the end of the day the ministry had concluded the modular structure itself was beyond salvaging.
The driver has given his own account of the crash. Luis Miguel Larios, who was hauling the load toward Guatemala, said he lost his brakes roughly 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) before reaching the bridge and considers himself lucky to have survived. His truck was carrying nine reels of paper weighing about 2.5 tons each, roughly 5,500 pounds apiece, and part of that load ended up scattered across the roadway.
Timing makes the repair more awkward than it would otherwise be. The Independence Torch relay passes through this way in the middle of the month, which has added pressure to clear the site and settle on a plan quickly. There is an additional wrinkle as the bridge was done in November 2025 as a temporary fix after a landslide destroyed part of the highway, and it was in the middle of a scheduled week of preventive maintenance when the truck hit it.
A structure meant to hold the line until a permanent solution arrived now needs replacing itself, and the permanent fix for this stretch of Route 1 remains unresolved. Traffic police are stationed at the closure to keep vehicles out while work continues. The ministry has not yet published a firm reopening date, and the two-month figure is an estimate rather than a commitment.
Until it reopens, the safe assumption is that Route 1 through Cambronero is unavailable. Check road conditions before you leave, allow more time than the map suggests, and if you are driving a tractor-trailer, Route 27 is your only option.
