A surprising, last-minute resolution by the Committee on Traditional Celebrations of the Santa Cruz canton to move the National Folklore Festival is being blamed on politics and the Chikungunya virus. According to Guanacaste news website Primero en Noticias, the hasty resolution consists of moving the fair from Plaza Lopez, also known as Los Mangos, to the fairgrounds, and the reason given by the ...

Overall good weather will be enjoyed by families and tourists in Costa Rica over the holidays. According to a weather forecast reported by national television network Repretel, sunny skies and moderate breeze will be predominant during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Average daytime temperatures will fluctuate between 22 and 24 degrees Celsius (71 to 72 Fahrenheit). After the sunset, however, a s...

A few days after the much-anticipated trailer of Jurassic World, a summer blockbuster film expected to arrive in theaters next year, a website for the fictional amusement park located in the equally non-existent Isla Nublar of Costa Rica began operating. At first sight, www.jurassicworld.com provides visitors with lots of information on the park, from a brief bio of the founder to an interactive m...

Source: Bandcamp Since 2004, alternative rock band The Movement in Codes has mostly been playing and recording hardcore punk. Most of the songs crafted by this band from Costa Rica are written in English, and in 2008 they were very close to landing a spot in the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago: They entered a contest to play the festival as an audience favorite, but in the end they were not c...

Source: Flickr Commons Since Monday, the number of complaints by workers who have not received their mandatory holiday bonus, known as Aguinaldo, has climbed to 70. According to a report filed by Jarmon Noguera of daily newspaper La Prensa Libre, the Ministry of Labor has entered 24 judicial actions against employers who have not yet paid the 13th month of pay as dictated by law in Costa Rica....

Over the last few days, iPhone users who subscribe to the popular Kolbi wireless carrier in Costa Rica have noticed that they can no longer navigate the Web or use some apps and simultaneously manage a voice call. The crux of this technical issue is that 3G access seems to goes away when a connection is made to another wireless phone or to a data source.   According to technology blog i...

Source: Cruz Roja Costarricense Red Cross paramedics and emergency officials from the San Rafael Hospital in Alajuela are at odds with each other after a 67-year old male from the United States suffered a cardiac and respiratory arrest at the main international airport in Costa Rica. The discord includes allegations of refusal of care and misuse of emergency resources.   The man rep...

Just when you though Starbucks could not come up with more recherché ideas for its cafes, the coffee giant is outdoing itself with the opening of its first Reserve® Roastery and Tasting Room, where java connoisseurs will be able to enjoy many things, including a Coffee Passion Projection Wall made of smart glass displaying images of coffee at origin on the company’s own farm in Costa Rica, which i...

Tax collectors in Costa Rica are ready to start looking for owners of luxury properties who lease their homes for less than 30 days at time; however, they currently lack the legislative approval to do so. This does not mean that preliminary investigations will cease until a law is passed; in fact, revenue investigators will increase their intelligence collection in the next few months.   ...

Source: Embassy of Japan On the morning of Wednesday, December 10th, the Embassy of Japan in Costa Rica officially handed the keys to three Toyota 4x4 ambulance vehicles that will be utilized by the Red Cross rescue squads of Porvenir in Limon, Hojancha in Guanacaste and Paquera in Puntarenas. These three emergency vehicles are part of the State of Japan’s Assistance-Community-Projects (APC) f...

The booming voice of play-by-play broadcaster Mario McGregor is well-known by football fans in Costa Rica who enjoy listening to live matches on the radio. When Mr. McGregor, who is an Afro Costa Rican from the Caribbean province of Limon, takes the microphone of Radio Columbia 98.7 FM, he gives it to you with as much love and emotion as he can muster.   While broadcasting from Brazil d...

Source: Jabad Lubavitch On a sunny and pleasant Sunday afternoon, the Jabad (Chabad) Lubavitch of Costa Rica celebrated the Januka Fiesta de las Luces (Hanukkah Festival of Light) with a very special activity for children in the loveable city of San Jose. The event took place at the elegant Avenida Escazu, and it was filled with fun, learning, and spirituality.   In addition to the ...

Source: Forbes Are there any lavish resorts in Costa Rica that can attain the coveted 5-star rating? Since the late 1950s, the world of luxury travel accommodations has been scrutinized by the star rating system made famous by the Mobil Travel Guide, which is now known as the Forbes Travel Guide. Five stars means luxury, which happens to be an emerging travel sector in Costa Rica. A 5-star rat...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The town of Puerto Viejo in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica is a haven for backpackers, vacationers and expats seeking a warm climate, an ultra-relaxed atmosphere and the friendliness of the local Afro Costa Ricans and indigenous inhabitants. Alas, the infrastructures of Puerto Viejo and the city of Limon are vulnerable to natural disasters such as storm surge and t...

Source: Tigo CR Tigo Star, one of the largest providers of cable television, broadband Internet and virtual telephony services in Costa Rica, has tendered an application before the Superintendence of Telecommunications (Spanish acronym: SUTEL), to acquire the assets and subscribers of Telecable, a residential and business provider that has a significant presence in the provinces of Alajuela, S...

Purchasing and activating a prepaid mobile phone in Costa Rica is easy. You can even get a SIM chip activated by a street vendor without showing an identification document, and this will cost less than $4. Adding time to a prepaid mobile device in Costa Rica is also easy thanks to the numerous retail shops that either top up the balance (known as “saldo”) or sell scratch-off cards in different den...

Source: Facebook The celebrity and tabloid gossip mill surrounding pop music diva Britney Spears is currently running at full speed as rumors about her possible engagement taking place in Costa Rica over the holidays. The extremely popular musician is reportedly dating Charlie Ebersol, a successful entertainment producer who is the son of a powerful couple in the world of television production...

Source: JPS A cherished holiday tradition in Costa Rica consists of participating in the madness of the Gordo Navideño, which roughly translates into “Christmas Fat Cat Lottery.” For this holiday season, the jackpot prize of the lottery in Costa Rica paid a cool $10.5 million for whoever held an entero (whole lottery bill), which can be purchased on a fractional basis since each lotto bill hol...

Tica Boxer and World Champion Hanna Gabriels This weekend, the world of boxing in Costa Rica gained one world title and vacated another despite a victory in the ring. It just so happens that the boxing match action involved two boxers who are married to each other and have a precious daughter who may also train to be a fighter one day.   We are talking about Hanna Gabriel Valle, who...

Costa Rica is a land of many attractive sunsets, and one of the best spots to see the sun go down amidst vanilla skies that seemed to have floated out of a Monet painting is Dominical, one of the prettiest coastal towns in our country. In recent years, Playa Dominical has attracted tourists who wish to keep this wonderful tourism secret all to themselves. As previously reported by The Costa Rica S...

Source: Wikimedia Commons What happens when a website running a massive database of allegedly pirated digital content ends up as the victim of piracy itself? Setting aside jokes about there being no honor among pirates; such a situation may be taking in place in Costa Rica.   After a spectacular police raid on a data center in Sweden, controversial and resilient file sharing website...

In this video recently shared by a YouTube user, an agile three-toed sloth in Costa Rica negotiates a tin roof and wooden beams of what appears to be a rustic shack in a tourist hotspot. A few important observations about this video: As we all know, sloths are adorable. This was not a lazy sloth by any means; it seems to have covered about 25 meters of roof in four minutes. Notwithstanding...

Source: Wikimedia Commons In the wake of the geopolitically significant announcement by the governments of the United States and Cuba with regard of their intent to renew diplomatic ties, speculation has emerged about the possibility of Cuba becoming a prime tourism destination for budget travelers. Since Costa Rica is widely considered to be the reigning queen of tourism in the Americas, how ...

One of the most exuberant nature preserves in the world is located in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica. As its name correctly implies, the Tortuguero National Park is brimming with turtles of all kinds: marine, freshwater and terrestrial turtles rule this haven for wildlife, which is also home to lush plant species, exotic birds, wild felines, caimans, sloths, manatees, and much more. Tortuguero...

A draconian situation in Costa Rica was recently reported by Jimena Soto of online news daily CRHoy.com, and it involves a denial of public health care to a foreign woman who is pregnant with the child of her husband of four years, who happens to be a Costa Rican citizen.   According to the news report, the husband of the Nicaraguan woman who was summarily denied benefits by La Caja,  C...

Source: Bing In 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge, Lebron James, Beyonce, the Kardashian clan, and Costa Rica had something very interesting in common: They topped Internet queries from United States users on search engine giant Bing, owned and operated by Microsoft. Within the category of Vacation Destinations, Costa Rica was not only the most searched term on Bing; it was also the only Central ...

Source: FEDEFUTBOL The Costa Rica Men’s National Football Team, affectionately known as La Sele, finished 2014 as the highest-ranked CONCACAF squad in the world, and they are now looking forward to the 2015 Gold Cup tournament, which will be hosted in the United States and Canada. La Sele will also play in the latter nation next year as Toronto will be the host city of the 2015 Pan American Ga...

In late September, The Costa Rica Star reported on a project undertaken by the Directorate of Conservation in the Central Pacific Area to install warning signs along the Tarcoles River advising residents and tourists about the presence of potentially dangerous caimans. The heart of the problem is feeding the numerous spectacled caimans (Caiman sclerops) that have migrated to that region from the C...

Wikimedia Commons SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Dec. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE) and the Ministry of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica (COMEX) announced that 39 new investment projects from the sectors of Corporate Services, Life Sciences, Light Manufacturing, Advanced Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Food Industry were attracted to Costa Rica in 2014. Thes...

Church in Downtown Grecia The Grecia canton of the province of Alajuela is located in the northwestern edge of Costa Rica’s Central Valley. Although it is technically part of the Greater San Jose Metropolitan Area (Spanish initials: GAM), this canton is removed from the chaos that the lovable city of San Jose is often derided for. Over the past few years, a quiet expat community has been se...

The first major land-based marine conservancy effort carried out in Costa Rica by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, founded by the ever-controversial Canadian activist Paul Watson, has wrapped up its operations for the year. Reports by Sea Shepherd and the Latin American Sea Turtles Association (LAST) are calling Operation Pacuare a success.   Before getting to the Sea Shepherd pre...

Earlier this week, Intel Corporation held a formal opening ceremony of its new research, development and testing center in Costa Rica. As reported by tech journalist Marvin Barquero of daily newspaper La Nacion, this is a “mega-laboratory” that will test and validate new products designed by this major chip manufacturer.   The opening of this research and development (R&D) cente...

As the United States continues to climb out of the Great American Recession, tourists are busy planning their 2015 vacation. Latin America is emerging as a favorite region for U.S. tourists to visit, and Costa Rica is returning to the annual list compiled by online travel site Priceline.com.   According to Priceline, Costa Rica is the fifth nation on the Top Ten list of international tr...

They are young, undereducated, unemployed, and disenfranchised. In Costa Rica and other parts of Latin America, they are known as the NiNis, an abbreviated portmanteau of “ni estudio, ni trabajo,” which translates into “I don’t study and don’t have a job.” The number of NiNis has been on the rise since 2010, and this has prompted public officials and researchers to take a closer look at this worri...

Shortly after the historic announcement by President Barack Obama of the United States and President Raul Castro of the Council of the State of Cuba on their renewal of diplomatic relations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Costa Rica issued an institutional communiqué expressing satisfaction on this development. Foreign Affairs Minister Manuel A. González Sanz stated: “This is a happy momen...

Source: Wikimedia Commons In a matter of just a few hours, three elderly persons in Costa Rica were crudely abandoned in the capital city of San Jose on December 18th. A report by Lady Rojas of online news daily CRHoy.com indicates that an elderly and disoriented gentleman arrived at the Caribbean bus terminal with nothing more than a handwritten missive bearing the following sinister message:...

More than a year has passed since The Costa Rica Star first reported on an announcement by Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica about its partnership with the Mozilla Foundation and smartphone manufacturers Alcatel and ZTE to make the Firefox OS mobile phone a reality in Latin America. Since then, sightings of the vaunted Firefox smartphone have been reported in South Africa, Greece and the...

A renowned ufologist and researcher of paranormal activity has determined that the ongoing eruption of the Turrialba volcano presents an ideal opportunity for sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in Costa Rica. Sixto Paz Wells is a Peruvian UFO researcher who has written dozens of books on topics that transcend the space-time continuum that most of us strive to understand. Mr. Paz wa...

It was blood, sweat and tears, and the blood part almost literally, for the Women's National Football Team of Costa Rica as they earned a well-deserved bronze medal in Mexico against their counterparts from Venezuela, who reacted very aggressively on the pitch and ignited a brawl that ensued a flurry of red cards. As reported by Fanny Tayver Marin of sports news daily Al Día, which is sadly nea...

At the awards ceremony of the 26th Math Olympiad in Costa Rica, 66 medals were distributed among the 132 high school students who reached the final events of this academic competition, which this year was hosted and organized by the University of Costa Rica. Of special note among the finalists was the high number of female students getting medals this year. This fact was not lost on Yokarime River...