If you would like The Costa Rica Star to publish your business press release, please contact us. Croc’s Casino Resort knows its business. Taking care of its local and worldwide guests with gracious hospitality and exhilarating entertainment. Edica Construction knows its business. Building world-class resorts with exacting standards, keeping their clients beyond satisfied. Both Croc’s Cas...

If you would like The Costa Rica Star to publish your business press release, please contact us. On July 2, a different kind of hangout opened in Samara, well attended by the local crowd curious to see what the Zen Den is all about. Some played pool in the corner, and all enjoyed socializing, accompanied by sangria and tapas-style food with low-key background music. The space on the main str...

Hot springs are more than just warm and relaxing pools. These areas have medical and healing properties due to their high mineral content. A group of businessmen who want to develop this concept formed a commission to promote medical hydrology in San Carlos, taking advantage of the existing infrastructure such as hot spring water touristic centers and the natural conditions of the environment. ...

Children and teenagers who file complaints for bullying will remain anonymous, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) ruled last week. The court admitted that this is at variance with adult due process rules that require plaintiffs to be identified. The case arose when the director of Gravilias de Desamparados school refused to release the identity of the accuser or accusers ...

If you are a vegetarian or vegan, traveling in Costa Rica is easy. Even those needing a gluten-free or dairy-free diet will have options. Rice and beans (both black and red) are part of every meal, even breakfast. Plenty of tropical fruits, salads, steamed vegetables, fried plantains and corn tortillas are common and available. If you eat fish, the country is full of fresh fish (both saltwater and...

A security guard who wants to get into the cockfighting game buys, befriends, and becomes inseparable from his rooster protégé Rocky, in this winsome feature debut from Costa Rican director Neto Villalobos. “Por las Plumas” (All About the Feathers) is about Chalo (Allan Cascante), a security guard who wants to get into cockfighting. He lives in an apartment above a fried chicken joint in a slee...

Living room This home for sale is located in Hermosa Heights, a residential community located in Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste that offers many amenities such as a Movie Theater, Mini Golf, Common Pools, Sports Bar, Restaurant and Fitness Center. This house in particular has a private pool on top of allowing access to the community pool. The community pool has water slides, and covered seating are...

Costa Rica wants to attract more Chinese tourists and investors and so it is planning to open consulates in Shanghai and Hong Kong, the Central American nation’s envoy to Beijing said Tuesday. The opening of the two consulates, which will augment Costa Rica’s only existing diplomatic mission in China, is a “project for 2014” that still must be approved by the foreign ministry, said Ambassador M...

The high school students of Home School Beach Academy (HSBA) in Nosara raised $900 to help electrocuted monkeys as part of a school project. After learning more about the problem, they decided to organize a Stop the Shocks race on Saturday morning, August 17 on Guiones Beach to raise funds for Nosara Wildlife Refuge and to raise awareness of the problem that monkeys face due to uninsulated powe...

A total of 1.32 million tourists arrived in Costa Rica in the first six months of 2013, which is an increase of 2.7% over the same period last year, according to data provided by the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT). The majority of the visitors from January to June arrived at the Juan Santamaría international airport in San José, followed by the Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia, while ...

Knowing exactly how many people use the public bus system every day, and thus learning the requirements of each route, is what the Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos (ARESEP) hopes to achieve with a study that began earlier this month. According to the ARESEP, the information to be obtained by the study is to establish “operational variables” ie. the size of the fleet, schedules, frequ...

On August 7, the Constitutional Court ruled that using trawling nets for shrimping is unconstitutional. This measure aims to minimize the impact that this type of fishing is causing along the country's coast, especially in the Gulf of Nicoya. The Constitutional Court determined that using trawling nets does not allow selection of the desired specimens, in many cases trapping unusable ones and t...

If you would like The Costa Rica Star to publish your business press release, please contact us. Glossy, high-quality surf photos are the main attraction of a new Nosara Shack Surf Magazine, which will hit the shelves of about 20 different Nosara grocery stores and surf schools during the first week of September 2013. Graham Swindell, the magazine’s publisher, had already made flipbooks of s...

One of the least expensive items in Costa Rica is a fixed line telephone (yes, they do still exist), the basic rate is only ¢1,850 colones (US$3.75) monthly, and includes 160 minutes of outgoing call time and no cost for incoming calls. But that may all change today, when the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones de Costa Rica (SUTEL) – Costa Rica’s telecommunications regulator – opens public ...

The first birding app for Costa Rica is a digital field guide replete with photos, sounds, text, and range maps for more than 500 bird species. If you want The Costa Rica Star to cover your business press release, please contact us. San Jose, Costa Rica – The second version of the Costa Rica Birds-Field Guide app became available in the iTunes Store in July, 2013. This is the second version of ...

An anti-GMO activist in San Francisco. Source: Wikimedia Commons The number of cantons in Costa Rica that have adopted legislation to prohibit the cultivation of potentially dangerous genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is now at 62. These transgenic-free territories are following a legal strategy often called the “anti-Monsanto doctrine” after the world's most powerful distributor of GMO se...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A recent feature on the WorldViews Blog of the Washington Post (recently acquired by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com) presents 40 maps of the world that cleverly combine geographic projections with interesting data. The result is fascinating insight into a variety of topics and issues. The Costa Rica Star has looked at five of the 40 maps and found some very inte...

Awhile back it seemed the more I knew about social marketing, SMO, SEO and Wordpress, the more of a workload I had and the more stressed out I became. One might tend to think that it would be the opposite - that more knowledge and experience would result in more efficiency of means and methods and less work. But, alas, it was not as such. What I was experiencing is similar to, but not the same ...

Source: Flickr CC Prosecutors in Puntarenas, a major port city in the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, have lodged a criminal complaint against the Executive President of the National Institute of Fishing and Aquaculture (Spanish acronym: INCOPESCA). The charges are related to shark fin poaching. According to an online news report by Alvaro Sanchez of CRHoy.com, INCOPESCA's Executive President ...

"A little girl?” asked a surprised Paulo Trejos, manager of Hooters restaurant in Escazú, where several customers saw a 10 year old girl apparently working there. A photograph that circulated on Facebook last Sunday shows the little girl working at Hooters with the uniform on. Furthermore, the customer who provided the photograph assures that the child was handing over food and bills to cu...

Source - Wikimedia Commons A widely praised and esteemed crime writer has passed away in his home in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Elmore Leonard was 87 years of age when he passed away from a complications following a stroke. With 45 books, most of them crime novels, and numerous screenplays under his belt, Mr. Leonard was a very prolific and stylistic author. Mr. Leonard's last novel, Ro...

A man in Costa Rica killed his ex-girlfriend and confessed by sending relatives a photo of her body via the smartphone application WhatsApp. This case appears to be a copycat killing, following a similar case recently in Miami. There, a man allegedly killed his wife and then posted a photo and confession on Facebook. The incident is reported to have happened on Saturday in the village of Hua...

Although the Government of Nicaragua said that President Daniel Ortega never threatened to claim the province of Guanacaste, several Nicoyan social groups decided to leave no room for doubt and will take to the streets this Thursday, August 22 to march peacefully to reconfirm the annexation cry. Marta Arauz, coordinator of the march, said that "it is a peaceful march and does not involve an...

In November of last year, several Nosara parents filed a complaint with the Ministry of Health after observing that some children at Serapio López School had stomach problems, allegedly for drinking the water at the institution. With this kind of complaint, the Ministry of Health was responsible for issuing a sanitary order to the Costa Rican Water and Sewage (AyA) Institute to perform the resp...

While they protest, we have to keep the Consulate closed: Foreign Minister Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister, Enrique Castillo, said late Sunday that the planned move for the Costa Rican Consulate in Managua was prevented due to “xenophobia fueled by President Daniel Ortega against Costa Rica”. Due to the protests outside the Consulate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to shut down sin...

During 2012, the office space market experienced a significant growth in supply motivated by the addition of new properties and new phases in existing projects. However, today, more office space without demand has put developers on alert. According to an analysis by Colliers International, in the first quarter of 2013 less office space has been rented by businesses, while more office space is m...

In order to talk with and get to know the concerns of Nicoyans, the former president of the republic, José María Figueres Olsen, showed up in the Coopealianza auditorium in downtown Nicoya on July 24. Figueres, now 58 years old, was president of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998, distinguished as the youngest head of state of Central America in modern times at age 39. In addition to his political ca...

If you would like The Costa Rica Star to publish your business press release, please contact us. Kava Delfin considers the environment, our local community as integral pieces of our success. We hope to set an example for good corporate role models who consider people, and the planet, in addition to profits, when making strategic decisions. Kava Delfin is the first restaurant fully dedicated ...

Source: Flickr CC Film lovers in Costa Rica rejoice: you have a few options to enjoy some very fine selections and even meet celebrities of the seventh art in August, September and October. Over the next few weeks, Costa Rica will be a haven of the silver screen with three thematic festivals that will feature domestic films, international offerings and Hollywood blockbusters. Plus, famous acto...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A recent news release published by the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) claims that three Canadian investors were victims of a swindle involving a bank account in Costa Rica. The incident dates back to 2012, and it was allegedly perpetrated by a presumed investment firm based in Chicago. According to a Notice of Hearing issued by the BCSC, the perpetra...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A teacher at a vocational high school in Costa Rica was wrongfully terminated and must be given his job back despite his addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. Such was the ruling of “Sala Cuarta,” Costa Rica's Constitutional Chamber, which is the country's highest court. According to a recent news report by online news daily CRHoy, the teacher in question was fir...

Spacious view of the front This very spacious 4 bedroom and 3 bathroom Mediterranean style home in the heart of Playas del Coco, Guanacaste is an absolutely perfect location for vacationers or full time residents seeking amenities "at your doorstep" in one of the most beautiful places of Costa Rica, for sale at $889,000. The lot and home are very large and accommodating. You can view more p...

Costa Rica's Hotel Industry does not want to lose its leadership in Central America, so in order to stay competitive it's seeking to establish an innovation and renewal plan to be implemented during the next 20 years. The president of the Costa Rican Chamber of Hotels (CCH in Spanish), Ruben Pacheco, explained that this initiative was the main subject of study of the National Hotel Congress, wh...

If you would like The Costa Rica Star to cover your business press release, please contact us. The first regional Franchise Fair (Expo-Franquicias 2013) will soon take place in Costa Rica. More than 8,000 investors interested in buying and selling franchises in Mexico, Uruguay, the United States, Spain and Panama are expected to attend. The activity will be held on September 26 and 27 at th...

The number of cases of Dengue – also known as breakbone fever – in Costa Rica continues to grow, reaching almost 27,000 cases so far this year and health officials fear it could skyrocket in the coming weeks. Dr. Daisy Corrales Díaz, at the Ministry of Health announced last Friday a contingency plan to win the battle. An army of health officials will be visiting the most affected communities...

National Liberation Party Presidential candidate Johnny Araya floated a controversial plan to eliminate the much hated “bachillerato” test requirement for those who do not intend to go on to higher education. Those who opt out of the test would receive certificates showing they had completed high school. The first big educational reform in a quarter century is bound to create a firestorm of ...

Paternity law, or father law, is the legal area dealing with establishing or disputing "paternity", the legal relationship between a father and his child. Paternity leave is mandatory in the public sector, ruled Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court on last Friday afternoon. The Court, also known commonly as the Sala IV, said that all public officials are entitled to a paternity leave of eight d...

Behind me, a cliff dropped to the ocean below. Across two lanes of asphalt, a sheer mountain face stood before me. Having spent the better part of two hours on the hunt, I had determined that this location would be the best spot to find her. Had I not already seen her once since being here in Costa Rica, I'd almost believe her to be mythical. Who is she? She's a vintage Baja Bug. Sadly, sh...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The rise of Internet communication, the advent of online social networking and globalization have given us a new breed of irrational beings: Haters. This sociological phenomenon is quickly spreading throughout Costa Rica, and it belies the country's top ranking on indices of world happiness and life satisfaction. Hater behavior is mostly observed in sports commentary,...

The view from abaft: USS Rentz. Source: Wikimedia Commons. The saga of the Capitan Erson -a fishing vessel (FV) registered in Costa Rica- and a United States Navy frigate continues to unravel as contradictory news reports emerge. The latest report is credited to the United States Embassy in Costa Rica, and it negates a previous Twitter update on the situation. A quick recap of the situation...