The Bridge at Guardia Is Being Rebuilt While You Drive Over It

The bridge over the Río Tempisque at Guardia de Liberia is the old two-lane span. In May 2025, two of its beams failed. Today its weakest deck panels are braced from below with steel plates and beams, and it will carry traffic between Liberia and the beaches for the whole 2026–27 high season. The first of its two replacements is being built alongside it and is not due to open until 2027. Both new bridges were sized for a four-lane Ruta 21, and as of late July that widening had only reached the point of being ready for tender. The bridge is coming first because the highway it was designed for is still on paper.

A repair that became a widening

The project started small. In November 2025, Periódico Mensaje reported that rehabilitation of the existing bridge would begin on Friday, November 21, 2025. The contract ran 567 days, and the plan included a temporary modular vehicle bridge. According to La Nación in April 2026, the contractor for that rehabilitation was Consorcio Tempisque, made up of Holcim Costa Rica, Procon and Heliconia Griego.

By August 2026 the plan was different. La Nación reported on August 23 that the project had been changed to widen the crossing to four lanes, "in line with the future widening of Ruta Nacional 21." The new design calls for two new bridges, each 121.5 meters long with two lanes, plus sidewalks and road approaches. Both are Waagner-Biró steel arch trusses, a modular design named for the Austrian company that created it.

This is why the work at Guardia looks the way it does. Rehabilitating the old span would have kept a two-lane pinch point at the river for decades. Instead, MOPT is building the river crossing for the road it expects to have later.

What is holding up the old deck this season

Until the first new bridge opens, the existing span does all the work. According to MOPT's September 26 update, the CONAVI crews have:

• Reinforced the problem deck panels from underneath with steel plates and beams
• Scheduled removal of the damaged asphalt for new patching, done at night with partial closures, on hours "to be communicated in due course"
• Begun work on the support pile for a temporary pedestrian walkway, so people in Guardia can cross the river safely on foot

MuniNoticias.CR's October 13 roundup still listed the closure hours as pending and the walkway as under construction. Anyone who regularly drives to Liberia after dark should watch for the night-closure announcement.

The bracing has a history. After two beams failed in May 2025, the bridge went to one alternating lane and heavy vehicles, including buses, were barred, La Nación reported at the time. The September work is meant to keep that same structure usable for the year or more it still has to serve.

The order things happen in

The sequence was chosen so that the river crossing never closes. As MOPT and La Nación describe it:

1. Now through 2027. The first new bridge goes up beside the old one. MOPT put it at 12% complete on August 21 and 14% on September 21, the week concrete pouring began on its foundation.
2. 2027. The first new bridge is scheduled to open.
3. After that opening. The old bridge is demolished, and the second new bridge is built in its footprint.
4. 2028. The second bridge is scheduled for completion, which gives four lanes across the Tempisque at Guardia.

The published cost is ₡2.682 billion in MOPT's September 26 release and ₡2.683 billion in its August and September progress updates.

One side effect of this sequence is that the old, braced bridge is the only crossing at Guardia until step two. That covers the whole season that begins next month.

The season the old bridge still has to carry

Guanacaste Airport's high season runs from November to April, as Delfino described it heading into last season. The airport sits 12 km west of downtown Liberia on Highway 21, on the stretch that runs out toward Guardia. The arrival calendar for this December fills up quickly:

The route dates come from The Tico Times' August roundup and are scheduled service, not flights that have already operated. The December 27 record did not last long. On March 21, 2026, the airport handled 14,967 passengers, 8% above it, according to Guanacaste a la Altura. The airport reported 1,973,831 passengers for all of 2025, a record year by its own account. For January through June 2026, Periódico Mensaje reported 1,324,718 passengers, up 11% from the same months a year earlier.

So the passenger peaks keep climbing while the crossing at Guardia stays exactly as it was in May 2025, two lanes reinforced from below.

What the four lanes are meant to fix

The Guardia bridge is one piece of a 20.5 km project. La Nación reported on June 5 that about 20,000 vehicles a day use the stretch of Ruta 21 linking Liberia and Daniel Oduber airport with the province's main beaches. The road has been at its capacity limit for more than three years. The project's feasibility studies put the average trip between central Liberia and Comunidad at 35.2 minutes and project 17.03 minutes once the road has two lanes in each direction. In the same report, users said peak-hour trips take much longer than the average.

Hernán Binaghi, president of the Cámara de Turismo Guanacasteca, told La Nación in that June report that Ruta 21 is the backbone from Liberia to Santa Cruz:

"Everything goes through the 21." (translated from Spanish)

He said trips that once took 30 minutes now take an hour and a half or two.

According to that report, the roughly $100 million plan includes:

• Added lanes along the 20.5 km between central Liberia and Comunidad
• Overpasses at the Liberia airport intersection, at Route 253 toward Nacascolo and Playa Panamá, and at Route 151 toward Playa Hermosa and El Coco
• Bridges, sidewalks, bike lanes and bus bays

The Route 1 intersection in Liberia is not part of this project. It falls under a separate asset-optimization project. Minister Efraím Zeledón said most of the right-of-way along the main road is already in place, and that the work might be tendered in two lots, one for the lanes and one for the bridges and overpasses.

Ruta 21 runs 145 km through the cantons of Carrillo, Santa Cruz and Nicoya. This project covers only its most critical 20.5 km. If you live past Comunidad, toward Filadelfia, Belén or Santa Cruz, your drive gets four lanes only as far as Comunidad. The government has named Comunidad to Nicoya as a later phase, without dates.

Where the widening stood at last report

In June, MOPT expected to publish the tender by July 25, 2026. If the contract was awarded in 2026, design would start in early 2027, construction in the second half of 2027, and the main road could be finished by late 2028. On July 24, CRHoy reported that the first phase, from central Liberia to Comunidad, was ready for tender. It had gone to public consultation on July 23 and would be paid for from CONAVI's budget. That report did not give a date for awarding the contract or starting construction.

Taken together, these dates explain the order of work. If the widening follows MOPT's June timeline, the second Guardia bridge, due in 2028, will finish at about the same time as the four-lane road meant to feed it. Until then, the old bridge carries the run to Liberia. When CONAVI announces the night-closure hours and opens the pedestrian walkway, those will be the next confirmed changes at Guardia.

At Tropical Investments, we follow projects like this one because travel time to Liberia and the airport is part of what it costs to live along Guanacaste's coast. If you would like to talk through how the Ruta 21 timeline affects the part of the province you are considering, we are glad to have that conversation.