If you make the trip to Samara or Carrillo Beaches in Guanacaste be sure to stop of at Panaderia y Heladeria PRINCESA Bakery & Ice Cream Parlor. It’s located just as you come down the hill from Nicoya into Samara on the right hand side at Patio Colonial. You can’t miss the big pink sign! Panaderia y Heladeria PRINCESA Bakery & Ice Cream Parlor opened in Samara July 14, 2012. The owner, Joan...

A B.C. man who suffered a potentially deadly snake bite in Costa Rica that left him weeping tears of blood is recovering in a Vancouver hospital thanks to the quick work of a medical team and an emergency flight to Seattle to pick up an antidote to the venom. Michael Lovatt, a 61-year-old old Sunshine Coast resident, was bitten by a venomous snake earlier this week while walking along a beach a...

While Krysia Peterson might not be from Texas, she has certainly embraced “Everything Western” in her fabulously well stocked new store, Caballo Loco Boutique, in Ciudad Colon. Hats and more hats are the first items that catch the eye when you enter this cozy and comfortably air conditioned local. To all those that know Krysia, this is hardly a surprise, as they are definitely her number one, f...

Carlos Caiceda Perlaza comes from a coconut plantation family on the Pacific in Colombia where they cultivated and sold coconuts. There, they processed the coconut for its juice and used it to cook shrimp, Carlos recounted. But it was when he came to Costa Rica that coconuts created a nostalgia in him, reminding him of his feelings for his family, and he became curious about what else coconut coul...

This week Starbucks announced it would enhance its ethical sourcing program with the investment in a new farming and research center in Costa Rica. The 240 hectare farm on Poas Volcano will become the coffee giant’s global agronomy center and is part of Starbucks’ promised commitment to source all its coffee ethically by 2015. The new Costa Rica farm is a boost for Conservation International (C...

Renting hotels and low interest loans to entrepreneurs with financial problems, have joined other traditional forms of money laundering. The latest news from the U.S. State Department on the subject, shows that profits from trafficking in cocaine and other drugs, internet gambling, financial fraud, human trafficking, corruption and smuggling, are the sources of the assets that are "cleaned" in ...

As you may or may not know the land under the Ara Project in Rio Segundo de Alajuela has been sold and the birds and volunteers are being evicted. It is a disgrace, there is no other way of saying it politely. Thanks to the efforts of Hotel Punta Islita - the Ara Project has a location to move to but CANNOT make the move without funding. There are a few things we can do to help in the shor...

February 26, 2013, San José -- Wednesday March 13, 11 a.m. marks the beginning of a new year for The Women’s Club of Costa Rica and a special luncheon at The Aurola Holiday Inn’s Salon el Grande Augusto. A special feature will be a stylish selection of handbags of every variety at bargain prices. Join a vibrant group of women actively furthering educational development in Costa Rica for a sump...

Reach506.com was launched over the weekend, with the aim of reaching thousands of English speaking expats in Costa Rica with a daily email-newsletter, advice, information, and savings on local businesses. The information shared on Reach506.com cannot be found anywhere else, and it comes from people who live on the ground in Costa Rica year round. “Personal subscription management is only one cl...

United States healthcare related entities including insurance companies, self-insured employers, third party administrators, hospitals, physician practices, managed care organizations and many others are all packing their shorts, flip flops and sunscreen and heading south to this year’s 4th Annual Medical Travel Business Summit being held in Costa Rica, April 24th-26th. With the recent passing of ...

On February 21, Costa Rica will host its first E-Commerce Day, as part of the lecture series that drive the development of electronic commerce in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Sao Paulo and Costa Rica. The event will be held on Thursday at the Hotel Real Intercontinental, with the aim of promoting the region’s approach companies and new entrepreneurs to trade online, bringin...

Morgan is a smaller black and white male dog; he stands apart because of his three legs. Panicked and dodging cars in the middle of a busy intersection in Escazú, a Good Samaritan managed to pluck him from the traffic and brought him to the Refugio. We are looking for a monthly Sponsorship for Morgan not because of his 3 legs but because he is incontinent. Our guess is that Morgan was a casualt...

Join the Professional Women’s Group (of the Women’s Club of Costa Rica) this Friday evening for its first networking event of 2013. This is a great opportunity to meet other professional women from a variety of industries, so bring your business cards! If this is your first PWG event, it will be a fun introduction to this diverse group of women. Beginner English speakers are welcome. Spani...

Source: TheCostaRicaNews.com Government officials from Central America and Mexico gathered in Costa Rica this week to discuss strengthening trade and strategies on the “war on drugs,” which is also a focus for the regional Central American Integration System (SICA) summit with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on February 19-20. Costa Rican Foreign Minister Enrique Castillo identified a p...

Source: TheCostaRicaNews.com The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Costa Rica on Wednesday the country's president, Laura Chinchilla, and move forward in strengthening the relationship of the EU with Latin America. The delegation of the European Union (EU) reported in a statement that Schulz, after meetings in Costa Rica and Panama will travel to Colombia on Thursday an...

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Feb. 13, 2013 - Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, today released a unique view into the State of the Internet for Costa Rica. Available at http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/q3_2012_costarica_soti_infographic.pdf, the data set compiles Internet connectivity ...

Los Vivancos, are a Flamenco Dance Company comprised of 7 brothers. Elías, Cristo, Israel, Judáh, Josua, Aarón and Josué come from a family where music, dance and art is a lifestyle. Each one of them traveled around the world collaborating with various dance academies, joining in 2007 to form their own dance company that bears his last name "Vivancos". Russia, Turkey, USA, France and Chil...

Costa Rica's Constitutional Tribunal, the country's highest court, on Feb. 6 unanimously rejected a case brought by the country's Mining and Industry Association challenging the 2010 ban on open-pit mining. The Associaiton argued that the ban on license renewal for existing open-pit mines is unconstitutional and applied in a discriminatory manner. The judges found that the prohibition on license r...

On the same trip that took us to Costa Rica's sexiest new sustainable hotel back in October, we ended up acquiring a nasty bout of food poisoning (no, not from said sexy hotel, mind you!) a couple days before our flight home. When we stumbled upon San Jose's Corteza Amarilla Art Lodge & Spa, we knew we'd found the perfect spot to recoup. Sure, maybe it was all the antibiotics and electrolytes the ...

My girlfriend and I just returned from a trip to Costa Rica and, as a transportation professional navigating a foreign land, I couldn’t help but take notice of certain aspects of Costa Rican mobility. During our trip, we spent all of our time in small, mainly rural towns – a vast contrast to the bustling urban environment in and around where we live in the Washington D.C. region. However, despi...

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A new tax reform bill is bringing up for discussion which sectors of the economy need these stimuli kept in place and which do not. The bill on a new tax reforms seeks to incorporate new control measures for public expenditure and to implement changes to the tax system. With the new reform, the country's tax burden would rise from the current 13.7% to 15.5% of production and could grow to 19...

Costa Rican consumer prices rose the most in three years after government regulators let energy costs rise in Central America’s second-biggest economy. Costa Rican consumer prices climbed 1.31 percent in January, the largest monthly increase since Jan. 2010, the national statistics agency said in an e-mailed statement today. Inflation quickened to 5.74 percent from a year earlier, the fastest s...

Culture is what remains when one has forgotten everything. If in Costa Rica we can speak of an ancestral culture, it is undoubtedly that of corn. Although we have already forgotten many of our best traditions, we must remember and conserve something proper and essential: we are children of the corn. For this reason, and the same as we did earlier with the cart, the oxherd or with calypso music,...

Rosie Heindl, a volunteer working with the auction, says they have collected over one hundred donated items for the 5th Annual Save The Howlers Auction that will be held at the Harbor Reef Restaurant this Friday February 1st. “We have many practical items, from restaurant gift certificates to pool supplies,” said Heindl. “We also have massages, surf lessons, house rentals, art and jewelry, and ...

A brand new TV and DVD player are now just charred pieces of metal. The fridge is still standing but it is ruined. All that is left are ashes in what used to be 89-year-old Argentina Matarrita Arroyo’s home in Panama in the district of Samara, just past Barco Quebrado. On Thursday, January 31, in the early hours of the morning, Argentina’s son, Alvaro Matarrita Arroyo, 67, went through his no...

Over the next nine months the Central Bank of Costa Rica will slow credit growth to the private sector, keeping it at below 9%. Posted under a publication of the Macroeconomic Program for 2013-2014 the measure is temporary and intends to prevent the formation of a credit bubble caused by excess liquidity. During 2012 private sector credit grew by 14.2%. The Costa Rican Banking Association (A...

Costa Rican's are warm caring people People are what make living in another country a positive experience, or a bad one. Here in Costa Rica, it's made up of small communities all over the country and they're never short of smiles and waves as you make your way through them. It has a warm 'hometown' feeling and its filled with people who don't have a care in the world. I've heard so many s...

They often arrive in bad shape — hit by cars, zapped by high-voltage wires as they climb trees, or orphaned because superstitious locals have killed their moms. But life gets sweet once the gates open at Costa Rica's sloth sanctuary, one of few in the world specializing in the study of these famously sedentary and solitary mammals. The youngest even get stuffed animals to hug in incubators...

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (February 3, 2013) - For a team that just won a significant competition, Costa Rica did not have the luxury of time to savor its triumph. That's the way it goes on occasion in international football. There is always another game, another tournament and another mountain to climb. Last Sunday, the Ticos captured the UNCAF Copa Centroamericana - Central America's biennial cha...

Meet the motivated, energetic women who have been providing scholarships, creating public school libraries and supplying textbooks to Costa Rican students for dozens of years. Two diverse opportunities to engage with them while enjoying one of our annual neighborhood gatherings! February 11 for a morning of physical and mental stretching with an active demonstration of Tai Chi, followed by...

As the NFL calendar season comes to an end with Super Bowl XLVII on February 3rd, the 2013 National Championship calendar season of the American Football Federation of Costa Rica (FEFACR) will have just kicked off. The league is entering into its 5th season as an organized sport, recognized by the Costa Rican Sports & Recreation Association (ICODER) and the International Federation of American Foo...

Have you ever had the dream of traveling around the world and seeing some of the things you have only been able to experience through travel magazines, movies or websites? My Destination has gone global to give you an opportunity to enter a contest that can make your dream turn into the Biggest Baddest Bucket List reality! Travel six continents visiting the 35 destinations from your bu...

Enjoy a night out with friends! Good music, a little laughter, maybe some dancing! All provided by the diversely talented members of The Little Theatre Group and producer Barry Slutskin. 7:30pm Friday 8th February in the Shakespeare Bar (Avenida 2, Calle 28). This will be an evening of lighthearted cabaret, that will feature musicians: Jim Trollinger, Silvia Schneegans, Mati Seth Bertucci, ...

The province of Guanacaste, an area where the winds blow strong, is hot for investors interested in wind farms, reports Nacion.com. In Tilaran, Guanacaste, there are already five power plants with wind turbines in operation. One is owned by the state run Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), and the other four are owned by private businessmen. Jovel Arias, mayor, said that because...

A Costa Rican journalist avoided a libel lawsuit after retracting accusations she made against the brother of President Laura Chinchilla, Adrián Chinchilla, in an August 2012 article published in the newspaper La Nación. Following the retraction, the court decided it was unnecessary to try journalist Vanessa Loaiza for libel since she withdrew her claim before the legal procedures against her c...

Costa Rican researchers are pioneering 'aquatic agriculture' — the method of growing crops on freshwater lakes and reservoirs — to boost food security in the developing world. The technique involves creating floating rafts on which vegetables, grains and flowers can be grown. Terrestrial crops such as grains and vegetables have their roots directly in the water or can be potted, with water bein...

Industrialists say they are at a disadvantage in competing with a country that offers great benefits to its companies, and have made calls to respect most of the sector, which opposes the treaty. A statement from the Chamber of Industries of Costa Rica (CICR) reads: Facing the fourth round of negotiations for a trade agreement with Colombia Industrialists demand respect for exclusions req...

Why not entrust a binational group of private businessmen the development of a region where poverty is currently the only truth? EDITORIAL Recent statements by a former minister of Costa Rica explain much of the underdevelopment of Central American countries. Under the heat of chauvinism and patriotism put forward by leaders during electoral campaigns and by officials who are simply not q...

A UFO was filmed by a pilot flying over Costa Rica, video posted to Youtube on January 30th, 2013. The silver, rounded orb flew past his airplane at an incredible rate of speed. What is it? The video below, posted to YouTube, is a Costa Rican TV broadcast report in Spanish. But the translation in the description tells the story. The pilot was filming out the window with an iPhone wh...