Source: La Voz Liberacionista Despite its world-class golf courses, massive luxury beach resorts and proposed water parks (complete with wave pools), Guanacaste is known to most people as the region with the most serious water challenges in Costa Rica. This is not, however, the view of legislator Maria Ocampo of the ruling National Liberation party, a Guanacaste native who sees “no problems wi...

Edgardo Baltodano Briceno football stadium in Liberia, GuanacasteThe Edgardo Baltodano Briceno football stadium in Liberia, province of Guanacaste, is now ready to make Costa Rica the proud host of the 2014 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup. Stadium staff recently announced that they have completed putting the final touches on the illumination system for night matches, which will actually exceed FIFA r...

Residents of Playa Coyote in Santa Cruz, province of Guanacaste, have always enjoyed massive arrivals of the equally massive leatherback sea turtles during nesting season. In 2014, however, the gentle giants have mostly ignored this quiet beach community in Costa Rica; a situation that has neighbors and conservation activists extremely worried. According to Pablo Rojas of online news daily CRHo...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons The announcements by Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto as well as by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reverberated around the world: Joaquin Guzman, the fugitive leader of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, was captured by Mexican naval infantry forces over the weekend. Thousands of news media outlets around the world broadcast the...

Many tourists and expatriate residents in Costa Rica have come to the conclusion that the “Switzerland of the Americas” is called that way not only because of her politically neutral stance or the quiet pastoral scenes in mountain landscapes. Switzerland is known as one of the most expensive places in the world, and Costa Rica can now boast to have that in common with the Swiss Confederation. Than...

File photo from Casa Presidencial As part of her farewell activities before transferring leadership of Costa Rica to the winner of the upcoming runoff election, President Laura Chinchilla is busy making sure that Guanacaste is no longer known by its previous label of “the forgotten province.” On a return visit to Guanacaste, President Chinchilla recently inaugurated a remodeled vocational high...

At a time when the water crisis in Guanacaste has escalated into interventions by law enforcement officers, neighborhood vigils and scrutiny by politicians, a small coastal community is enjoying the benefit of two new water wells complete with their corresponding pumps, distribution pipes and a storage tank. What is surprising about these two new water sources is they were unusually donated by a r...

Former Crest of Liberia Mia Football Club A mystery surrounds the discovery of the lifeless body of Julio Cesar Sotela Canales, a Guanacaste native known as an athlete, entrepreneur and former owner of the Liberia Mia football team. The late Mr. Sotela was found on the banks of the Colorado River, apparently the victim of a brutal beating that has shocked football fans in Guanacaste and across...

Crater Dome at Poas Volcano. Source: RSN Volcano tourists rejoice: The Central American portion of the Ring of Fire is currently on fire, and volcanoes in Costa Rica and Nicaragua are showing off their natural beauty and power with sulfur emissions, red-hot glowing walls, phreatic (ground water eruptions), and even seismic events from deep within. The colossi in question are the Poas and Turri...

Residents of Guanacaste, start your engines. The loud roar you hear is the sound of Costa Rica's future racetrack at Finca La Ponderosa in Bagaces, about 24 kilometers away from the Daniel Oduber International Airport in Liberia (LIR). According to a recent news article by Ariel Chaves Gonzalez of Diario Extra, racing could begin later this year. It has been a few months since Costa Rica's days...

Part of Santa Elena Preserve Luxury beach resorts, marinas, theme parks, and hotels: This is Guanacaste in the 21st century. It was not too long ago when this region of Costa Rica was known as the “forgotten province.” These days, however, luxury resort developers and assorted capitalists are looking at Guanacaste with hungry eyes. A new $125 million project recently announced that it will ...

Playa Guiones in Guanacaste is often considered to have the most consistent surf conditions in Costa Rica; however, that was not the case last week as the 2014 Olympus National Circuit rolled into town. Conditions were sloppy and less than ideal for a high-caliber surfing tournament, particularly for Caribbean power surfers such as Gilbert Brown. Notwithstanding, Brown's experience prevailed in de...

In late December, the Costa Rica Golf Federation held a special event at the Cariari Country Club. More than 30 golf instructors received special training to achieve the standards of the United States Kids' Golf Certified Instructor Seminar. The ultimate goal of this training is to grow the sport at the junior level in Costa Rica and eventually become an official destination of the U.S. Kids' Golf...

Guanacaste is the province with the most water difficulties in Costa Rica, and the beach community of Playa Potrero is currently one of the most affected. As recently reported by the Costa Rica Star, police officers took the local water utility office in Playa Potrero by force in accordance to a court order, an act that scared neighbors of this once peaceful beach town. Politicians have been quick...

The Puntarenas Carnival is one of the most prominent beach celebrations in Costa Rica, and this year it will feature an international gathering of motorcycle aficionados, one of the largest conventions of iron horse riders in Latin America. This event will follow the successful live music presentation by Inner Circle, the legendary Jamaican reggae band known for their hit songs “Bad Boys” and “Swe...

A little more than four years ago, Ticos preparing to go to the polls in early February noticed that the skies above the Central Valley were crisscrossed by contrails (condensation trails, those fluffy white lines that airplanes leave behind). Claudia Calvo, a resident of Curridabat in the eastern suburbs of San Jose used her mobile phone to capture video of the sky along with her observations abo...

Many foreigners visit Costa Rica specifically for the purpose of getting quality medical attention and medications at very affordable prices, and a few of these medical tourists become interested in returning for an extended visit. Now that the two major medical centers CIMA and Clinica Biblica have expanded to Guanacaste, some medical tourists are intrigued by the expat lifestyle. As foreign resi...

The hospitality and tourism industry of Costa Rica welcomes a diversity of tourists. From surfers to eco-tourists and from science researchers to language learners, Costa Rica loves them all –even sexual tourists, as long as they do not engage in garish behavior in public. There is, however, one special interest tourist group that Costa Rica should strive to attract for various reasons: Birdwatche...

Around the same time violent civil unrest situations in Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela were unfolding and making uncomfortable headlines around the world, international groups dedicated to making peace an inalienable human right were meeting in Costa Rica in an effort to advance their efforts towards a declaration before the United Nations. The meeting took place in San Jose on February 11th, ...

Poster for The Suicide Shop If you missed the recent online French film festival or the visit by acclaimed director Patrice Leconte to Costa Rica, the Alianza Francesa (French Alliance) wants you to know two things: 1) c'est la vie! and 2) you still have three more chances to catch great films directed by Monsieur Leconte in February. The best part about this news is that these cinematic goodi...

Liberia bullring under construction Costa Rica is feeling the growing pains of transitioning from a dignified rural economy to a developing nation under the rule of globalization. News reports from the municipality of Liberia, one of the most important cities of Guanacaste, indicate that a requirement from the National Institute of Insurance (Spanish initials: INS) could effectively prevent th...

Source: MEP In late January 2014, Ambassador Mamoru Shinohara was busy preparing for the Japanese Culture Month in Costa Rica, which started on February 6th and will continue through March 15th with many activities -including a cool anime film festival in San Ramon. Still, Ambassador Shinohara made time in his busy schedule to sign a funding commitment worth $104,600 to remodel the San Luis de ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Guanacaste is the aquaponics capital of Costa Rica and perhaps of Central America. This agricultural discipline has been lauded for the way it integrates principles of sustainability. The most basic aquaponics systems involve raising aquatic animals and growing plants in a way that is symbiotic for all species, but the complexity of these systems can be increased for ...

Flappy Bird mobile screen. In the last week or so, just about everyone in Costa Rica who uses an Internet connection learned about the strange circumstances leading to the sudden rise and fall of the mobile application Flappy Bird. Video game blogger Herberth Castro of La Nacion weighed in on the Flappy Bird enigma with sharp commentary that suggests the strong possibility of a 21st century ma...

The new Peugeot 3008 Although executives at new vehicle dealerships in Costa Rica are not quite ready to expand their showrooms to Guanacaste, they are paying close attention to the number of car buyers from that region. The year 2013 was highly satisfactory in terms of new car sales in Costa Rica, and they expect 2014 to be even better. With slightly lower import taxes for new cars in Costa Ri...

One of the best music festivals in Costa Rica takes place in Playa Nosara, province of Guanacaste, each year. The Caricaco (Beach Crab) Music Festival has been taking place since 2009, and each iteration has been more exciting than the previous one. This year's Caricaco Music Festival will be no exception, and it will be held in Finca Austria, closer to Playa Guiones, in order to accommodate t...

Regardless of how you may feel about buying drinking water that has been taken from an everyday source and put into a plastic bottle, the fact is that bottled water is big business in Costa Rica. When the ongoing arsenic contamination brouhaha in Guanacaste reached a boiling point back in August, a group on unscrupulous businessmen began selling bottled water that was found to have the same arseni...

Source: Weber BBQ Fest The smell of marinated and grilled fine cuts of meat permeated the air this past weekend at the 2nd Annual Weber BBQ Fest in Costa Rica, which took place in the parking lot across from Nova, in the glitzy (and secretive) Avenida Escazu. This festive gathering of carnivores and culinary experts included more than just plates full of steak, ribs, sausage, chicken, fish, an...

Lloret de Mar beach, Costa Brava, Spain Until recently, Costa Rica was considered the best option for North Americans considering retirement or a permanent change of scenery. To this effect, regions such as Guanacaste now boast the highest concentration of expats in Costa Rica. Rampant inflation and a relentless increase in the cost of living is making some expats explore their potential optio...

Semanario Universidad, the weekly news publication produced by the University of Costa Rica, saw its website brought down by distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks in late January. Hackers overwhelmed the online magazine's web servers with up to four million requests and server calls per minute. The attacks, which ostensibly originated from Russia, followed the publication of a political sur...

Pulmitan of Liberia Marcopolo Paradiso 1800DD passenger bus between San Jose and Playas del Coco, Guanacaste One of the most advanced, luxurious and comfortable coach buses in Latin America is operated by Pulmitan of Liberia, a respected transportation provider from the province of Guanacaste. The Marcopolo Paradiso 1800DD is an elegant double-decker bus that steals a lot of looks wherever it ...

Agents from the Organization of Judicial Investigations of Costa Rica (Spanish initials: OIJ) have taken two persons into custody for their alleged participation in a narcotics distribution and retail scheme that catered to foreign visitors and expatriate residents in Guanacaste and Puntarenas. When the suspects were arrested in Liberia, they were found in possession of cocaine byproducts as well ...

Many people who suffer from inflammatory diseases of their connective tissues tend to develop an uncanny ability to predict bad weather. Osteoarthritis and its many related conditions are often cited as the reasons some expats move to Costa Rica, specifically to places such as Atenas and Guanacaste. The relation between joint pain and climate has always been questioned, but a recent study by medic...

A few beach communities are named Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica, and two of them often get mixed up by tourists and expats. There's Playa Hermosa near Jaco Beach -this one is in the province of Puntarenas, and there's also the Playa Hermosa of Costa Rica's Gold Coast in Guanacaste. These two tourist and expat havens have one thing in common: They are gorgeous beach towns besieged by crime that often...

Artwork for Hembolia CerebralIn the style of musical groups such as Minor Threat, The Clash and the Dead Kennedys, three young men from Guanacaste punish their instruments and scream lyrics of discontent about how they see Costa Rica in the post-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) era: A socioeconomic model gone wrong. This is Hembolia Cerebral (Brain Aneurysm), a hardcore punk trio from Costa Rica's Gold ...

Bilingual and friendly doctors and dentists await you in Costa Rica. The global health tourism industry has grown significantly despite a lack of substantial publicity or marketing. To this effect, Costa Rica is the leading destination in the Americas for medical tourists and visitors seeking quality and affordable treatment options; there are several reasons why this country enjoys this statu...

Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations meet protests in Salt Lake CityThe acceptance of Costa Rica into the Pacific Alliance, a new Latin American trade bloc, has been reported with a certain level of interest and excitement around the world. Israel is one of the various observer nations in this new bloc, and Arutz Sheva (Channel 7) recently remarked on the trade and economic opportunities...

Puma hunting howler monkey in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Photo by Professor Rob Pringle of Princeton University.A recent series of amazing photographs by Professor Rob Pringle of Princeton University show a tenacious Puma concolor (a cougar or puma) climbing the tall branches of a torchwood tree looking to make a meal out of an Alouatta palliata (howler monkey) at the Santa Rosa National Park, provin...

A state-controlled news media organization from Venezuela recently apologized for reporting that the United States military industrial complex that the late President Eisenhower warned the world about had reached Costa Rica. The report specifically mentioned a U.S. base in sunny Guanacaste, with 46 warships, an aircraft carrier, 200 gunships, 6 fighter jets, and 13,000 combat troops. While it is a...

Plate of Chicharrones in Costa Rica Quite a few tourists leave Costa Rica disappointed with what they perceive as a narrow range of culinary options. This feeling is exacerbated by the unwritten rule that every meal, from breakfast to late night snack, should feature some combination of rice, beans and corn tortillas. While this grain combination is ever-present in restaurants across the count...