Source: Wikimedia Commons Are you an American? Do you live in America? According to demographic data provided by Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, most readers of the Costa Rica Star live somewhere in the Western Hemisphere between the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and thus there is a strong chance that you, dear reader, are an American. But, does this mean that you were born in the U...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A small island in the province of Guanacaste is gaining significant attention among marine conservation circles as the busiest point for sea turtles that massively arrive in Costa Rica during nesting season. San Jose island is part of the Guanacaste Conservation Area (Spanish initials: ACG), and from November 2012 until this past May had registered 1,933 nesting event...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A public and private partnership comprised of business leaders and health officials in the province of Guanacaste are attempting to jump-start the medical tourism industry of Costa Rica. A few days ago, a regional initiative named Guanacaste Health and Travel was unveiled. This initiative will try to shift the bulk of medical tourism to the Pacific Northwest region of...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The main attraction of the upcoming $10 Million Water Kingdom Aquatic Park in Guanacaste, Costa Rica is named after a legendary surfing spot in the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The Waikiki artificial wave pool is bound to attract many visitors, both foreign and domestic, and thus it is ready to accommodate up to 1,000 swimmers and inland surfers. The pool's mechanism wil...

Black Friday in the US. Source: Wikimedia Commons It is no secret that close ties between Costa Rica and United States have been creating certain cultural trends in the Central American nation over the years. The Halloween and Thanksgiving Day traditions come to mind, but the rise of consumer culture in Costa Rica is a better example. In this regard, some merchants in Costa Rica are poised to ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons In the 21st century, the province of Guanacaste has become a land of contradictions. Known for many decades as the “forgotten province” of Costa Rica, Guanacaste these days is a land of luxury yachts, extravagant resorts, impressive mansions, ultra high-tech aerospace firms, top-notch research universities, and excruciating unemployment. It is in Guanacaste that we...

Source: Twitter Haters in Costa Rica, there's a new song for you to learn, which should be harmonized to the tune of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It goes like this: Saborio scored-a-goal, Scored-a-goal, Scored-a-goal, Saborio scored-a-goal, Sa-bo-rio Star striker Alvaro Saborio, a veteran of the National Football Team of Costa Rica who also plays in the Real S...

Source: Wikimedia Commons With the high tourist season looming just before the holidays, Costa Rica is getting ready to welcome hundreds of thousands of North American and European visitors. According to Canadian tour operator Signature Vacations, member of the Sunwing Travel Group, the high demand from tourists who want to vacation in Costa Rica calls for added capacity. A recent press rel...

Source: Kevin Manzur for T-Mobile Wireless provider T-Mobile and pop superstar Shakira recently teamed up to announce the end of exorbitant roaming charges for United States customers traveling to Costa Rica and other countries. On the last day of October 2013, just in time for the start of the busy tourist season in Costa Rica, T-Mobile customers who subscribe to the Simple Choice U.S. data p...

Genesis is a young lady in Costa Rica who feels that her life has been filled with blessings -despite the fact that her mother, Ana Acevedo, made a difficult choice 17 years ago: She gave up her baby daughter to Shirley Gomez, an infertile neighbor. Thanks to a daily tabloid newspaper in Costa Rica, Genesis traveled to Playas del Coco earlier this year to meet her biological mother and maternal gr...

The ongoing supermarket and shopping plaza wars in Costa Rica are expanding to Playas del Coco in the Guanacaste province. This beach town, which has experienced incredible commercial growth in the last few years, is already awaiting development of a luxury marina for the yachting and sports fishing crowd, but that's not all. Coming soon to Playas del Coco: New shopping centers, supermarkets, bank...

Source: Flickr CC Online poker rooms, Internet casinos and sportsbooks in Costa Rica are part of an industry that began in the late 20th century and saw its heyday circa 2006. This multimillion dollar industry lives partially in the shadows for various reasons; the most important being the constant pressure applied by law enforcement and prosecutors from the United States. After more than a de...

Source: CocoArtsCenter.com An artist and real estate developer from Seattle has teamed up with a renowned architect to create the future mecca of arts and culture in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Coco Arts Center is the name of this future art gallery and cultural exhibition facility, which will be located 100 meters east of Iguanas, on the northern sector of the town. This ambitious projec...

Source: Fuerza Publica Fuerza Publica, the national police force of Costa Rica, is stepping up its vigilance in Guanacaste. Increased foot patrols, strategic operations and good community relations have resulted in the arrest of several suspects allegedly involved in drug dealing, poaching, robbery, and smuggling. Population growth and enhanced foreign investment in Guanacaste call for increas...

Can a movie produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake change the landscape of online gambling in Costa Rica? If it is up to the American Gaming Association (AGA), a powerful industry and lobby group in the United States, Runner Runner could be the worst thing to happen to online poker in Costa Rica since Black Friday. The Costa Rica Star has been following the...

Source: Wikimedia Commons It's official: Feeding a family in Costa Rica has become an uphill economical challenge; and the incline is bound to get steeper. According to the Statistics and Census Institute (Spanish acronym: INEC), consumers in the most expensive Central American nation were hit with sticker shock in September as they visited supermarkets and pulperias. Similar to the Big Mac...

Church in Downtown Grecia A wave of crime that has been sweeping through the northwestern rural areas of the province of Alajuela seems to be spreading to other cantons to the south. As previously reported by Radio Santa Clara and the Costa Rica Star, robberies and break-ins have multiplied in recent months, but criminals are now turning violent and targeting expats from the United States livi...

The next time your daughter in Costa Rica looks at you with sad puppy eyes and tells you she wants a puppy, you might have to tell her: “Sorry, honey. We don't have a license for that.” A bi-partisan legislative proposal recently introduced in the National Assembly of Costa Rica will require a household permit or certificate for those who want to care for companion animals. According to nationa...

Source: FAO Hunger and malnutrition have thankfully never been a catastrophic issue in Costa Rica, a country where food is plentiful, and where social conscience motivates individuals to look out for those who are less fortunate and make sure they do not go hungry. Although hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean has effectively decreased by 3.8 percent in the last two decades, there is stil...

Source: MSP Agents from the Drug Control Police (Spanish initials: PCD) in Costa Rica recently seized approximately 308 kilograms of powder cocaine hydrochloride aboard a cargo ship that arrived from Colombia. Just hours after the PCD made the bust, the Ministry of Public Safety (MSP) posted 16 detailed photographs and a video of the operation, right down to the moment the drugs are flown to t...

If online social networking was the electoral platform of Costa Rica, the shoo-in presidential candidate would certainly be Jose Maria Villalta Florez-Estrada of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) political party. No other candidate has been able to gain such a significant market share in terms of social media, not even former Mayor of San Jose Johnny Araya, the leading candidate to succeed President...

Source: FIFA The national football teams of Honduras and Mexico are anxiously waiting their turn to play their counterparts from Costa Rica. Although La Sele is comfortably looking forward to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, which is now less than a year away, at least three other teams from the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) are lookin...

A powerful and destructive synthetic opioid made popular by Russian street chemists has apparently reached the United States. Krokodil is the name of a scary mixture of codeine, gasoline, paint solvents, and household cleaners that aims to approximate the effects of desomorphine. Once designer drugs become popular in the U.S., they tend to reach Costa Rica in just a few months, but we hope Krokodi...

A political impasse at the United States Congress has caused the federal government to shut down its non-essential services, but the Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica remains open for business. According to a communiqué by the Embassy, Social Security payments will continue and assistance in applying for federal benefits is still available. Social Security and Medicare cards will not be issued du...

Source: Wikimedia Commons For more than a week, news media outlets in Costa Rica and around the world have been publishing articles with eye-grabbing headlines that allude to the worldwide popularity of bananas (Musa acuminata et al) as being responsible for the demise of the Caiman crocodilus in our Caribbean coast. Clever headlines such as “Yellow Peril,” “Crocs Going Bananas,” “Love For Ban...

Source: Wikimedia Commons With two powerful slogans and a patriotic call, a small militia group in Costa Rica shut down its online presence and put an end to a short-lived existence that came under heavy criticism and a strong warning by the Ministry of Public Safety (Spanish initials: MSP). The Patrulla 1856 (Patrol 1856) was apparently an informal militia group that was attempting to take up...

As more tourists from all over the world discover Costa Rica, they are likely to seek products closely associated with our country. Capturing this market is one of the objectives behind the marketing and branding strategy of Costa Rica's government agency in charge of tourism affairs, ICT. To this end, a handful of firms are finding success on the world's most popular online retailer. As it sta...

Facebook is the most popular online social network in Costa Rica. It is extensively used for various purposes, particularly for checking up on romantic partners. This activity that is quickly catching on among couples of all ages. According to a survey performed by polling firm Unimer and commissioned by Grupo Nacion, 16 percent of Facebook users in Costa Rica use the social network as a tool for ...

A new law passed by legislators at the National Assembly of Costa Rica will reduce the nation's contribution to the electoral process by about 20 billion colones, approximately $40,000,000 at today's currency exchange rate. This legislative action was proposed by the Citizens' Action Party (Spanish initials: PAC) and received significant support from Costa Rica's powerhouse political parties. B...

Space Junk. Source: NASA The human race has a seemingly unlimited capacity for producing waste, and this most unwelcome trait extends beyond our planet. Space junk, all those defunct satellites and miscellaneous debris that no longer serve a purpose, is growing at an alarming rate. This is something that the Ad Astra Rocket Company of Costa Rica is looking into. The issue of too much junk o...

Source: Fuerza Publica What do potato sack races, face-painting, community football leagues, magic tricks, balloon animals, and coloring books have in common? These are the secret weapons of crime prevention used by Fuerza Publica, the national police force of Costa Rica. Rookies who graduate from the National Police Academy of Costa Rica know that they will be expected to do two things in ...

File photo. Source: MSP Costa Rica The migratory patterns of certain marine species during the green (rainy) season prompt illegal fishermen and shark finning crews to ply their wicked trade in Cocos Island National Park, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Tuna, sharks, large sea turtles, and even the curious-looking mola mola (ocean sunfish) are the typical catch that these poachers of Cost...

Source: Wikimedia Commons For more than four years, Sergeant gave his precious blood to his fellow canine species in Costa Rica. Until recently, the mixed breed male dog was a common sight at the Canine Blood Bank, which was organized by Veterinaria Machado in Heredia. Every four months, Sergeant would donate 450 ml of blood, but the dog’s age prompted veterinarians to retire him. Sergeant,...

Source: Wikimedia Commons On October 1st, the Congress of the United States of America, through political inaction and disagreement, might end up “shutting down the government.” What this means is that a number of non-essential services will not be provided until Congress agrees on a budget resolution for the next fiscal year. For Costa Rica, the U.S. government shutting down would cause a cou...

Gwadar, before the earthquake. Flickr CC In the aftermath of the terrible earthquake in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a new island has emerged off the coast of Gwadar, leaving the people of Costa Rica to ponder about two things: 1 – The geotectonic birth of our country in the Jurassic period, and 2 – How long before President Daniel Ortega claims the new island as part of Nicaragua (insert...

Source: Facebook At a recent lingerie fashion show in Costa Rica, a Colombian model who also performed as a singer onstage was asked by daily tabloid Diario Extra: “So what did you think of the show?” to which she responded “Awesome, you know? I love the people of Puerto Rico!” You can cue the trombones at this point, but the fact is that Costa Rica gets confused with Puerto Rico more often th...

Los Suenos. Source: Wikimedia Commons A significant drop in sports fishing tourism and the global financial crisis are to blame for causing investors to shy away from marina projects in Costa Rica. According to a recent report by business journalist Ana Cristina Camacho Sandoval of El Financiero, out of 21 marina projects that filed for permits in 2007, only nine remain -and they are all stall...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Video game enthusiasts in Costa Rica and around the world have waited for two major events in 2013. One of those events recently took place: The release of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V, which managed to pull $1 billion in sales in less than a week. The other event is the forthcoming: The release of the long-awaited Xbox One console by Microsoft, which might end ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons In the wake of powerful American brands Hard Rock Cafe and Starbucks increasing their presence in Costa Rica, the iconic Florida restaurant chain Hooters is ready to begin development of its latest franchise in the Greater San Jose Metropolitan Area (Spanish acronym: GAM). The new location, which is scheduled to open in 2014, will the be the sixth Hooters restaurant i...

Source: Remembering Justin It has been more than two years since Justin Johnston was shot and killed in Costa Rica. His killer, a security guard who thought the teenager from Kansas was breaking into a hotel, is facing 15 years in prison. The retrial was ordered by the Appeals Court of San Ramon, province of Alajuela, under the doctrine of iuris tantum -rebuttable presumption. As explained ...