Top 10 Costa Rica

IRON MAIDEN performed in front of 20,000 fans at the Ricardo Saprissa Stadium, Tibas Costa Rica. The venue, although small in comparison to its world wide counterparts, is the largest in Costa Rica and has played to host to many popular artists in recent years including the BLACK EYED PEAS, ENRIQUE IGLESIAS and most recently ALEJANDRO SANZ.

If you’re looking to get Internet access for your home or office, Costa Rica has a few options that should fit your budget. For now, all Internet traffic goes through Grupo ICE, the state-owned power and communications company that has a monopoly on the market. Almost all the services require you to sign a contract plus pay a refundable deposit but these are not significant.

Here is a summary of the different services available, pricing and their pros & cons.

Dialup
This option allows you to connect to the Internet using your home phone line. With a maximum download speed of 56 kbps, this service is fine if you just want to check your email or post to your blog once in a while. If you’re going to be doing much more than that, the slow speed may drive you nuts. Another downside of this option is that you can’t speak on your phone and be online at the same time. This service is provided by RACSA and there are a few different service plans available:

• Economy Plan. Monthly plan at $4.95 per month + 4.10 colones per minute for phone time.
• 900-en-linea. This is a pay-as-you-go plan at 11.10 colones per minute (including the phone call rate)
• Prepaid internet access cards. Available for 1,800 colones for 5 hours to 5,500 colones for 15 hours of use.

ADSL
Costa Rica’s high speed internet service that works through your phone line, while still allowing you to use the phone normally, is the most widely used option. This service is offered by ICE and is called “@celera” which means “to speed up”. The rate for this starts at $19/month plus 21,000 colones for installation.

Cable Modem
This type of access is available only to people who have CableTica or Amnet cable service so it is mostly restricted to the bigger towns. Rates start at $17/month for 256/64 kbps to $169 for the top-end at 4Mb/1Mb plus a small fee for modem rental.

WiMax
WiMax is a new broadband service that allows you to access the Internet from your home or office via a wireless antenna. Starting at $29 per month for 512/256 kbps, you also have to take into account that you have to pay a small monthly fee for modem rental. WiMax is only available in San Jose, Heredia, Cartago, Escazú, Santa Ana for now although it is expanding to Alajuela and other cities shortly.

Internet Cafés
Virtually every small town in Costa Rica has an Internet Café - some people say they’re almost as common as churches and soccer fields. Rates vary and usually increase as you get farther away from San José. You can expect to pay anywhere from 300 in San Jose to 1,500 colones per hour along the coast or tourist destinations. Internet Café’s are highly recommended as they’re relatively cheap and you don’t have to worry about getting your expensive laptop stolen.

Free WiFi Hotspots
RACSA is offering free Wireless Internet access in the following places:

Juan Santamaría International Airport, Alajuela
Multiplaza, Escazú and Este
Paseo de las Flores Mall, Heredia
Plaza Real Cariari, San Antonio de Belén, Heredia
Terramall, Trés Ríos/Cartago
Metrocentro Mall, Cartago

There are also many hotels, bars and restaurants that provide free wireless access so ask around. Bagelman’s is one of my favorite spots to enjoy a bagel and coffee while I check my email. Some Subway chains and coffee shops also offer free WiFi.

As with all things in Costa Rica, Internet service can sometimes be unreliable. My connection is usually OK except when bad weather knocks down utility lines. If your connection goes down, just remember where you are… and go for a walk.

What for 30 years has been a punch line to jokes about Costa Rican government inefficiency finally got moving yesterday, as President Oscar Arias and other government officials inaugurated the construction of the San José-Caldera highway.

When completed, the 77-km stretch of road will cut driving time by almost a third from the capital to the Pacific coast down to less than an hour.

Ministry of Public Works and Transport head Karla González said concessionaire Autopistas del Sol � a consortium made up of a Spanish, a Portuguese and a Costa Rican company � has 30 months to complete the highway.

The Fortune 500 company Procter & Gamble will be investing $2 million to create a new Business Strategy Center in Costa Rica from which they will provide business consulting to all of the regional branches throughout Latin America with a focus on innovation.

The general manager of P&G’s operation center Global Business Services, William Merrigan, made the official announcement yesterday morning in a meeting with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the Exterior Commerce Minister, and the general director of Cinde (Costa Rican Coalition of Development Iniciatives).

The company has had branches in the country since 1999, and its Financial Services Headquarters here has already seen 75% growth since its creation three years ago. After the states, the multinational has more employees in Costa Rica than any of its 80 other international locations, and sees approximately $30 million coming from the Costa Rica branch annually.

The new center will have 250 employees and will serve as a base for consulting branch offices on issues regarding finances, efficiency, cost reduction, information and distribution. They will be looking to fill about 150 positions in the very near future with qualified personnel that have a high level of English and leadership skills.

P&G has budgeted $34 million for its 2008 operations in the country, a number which could increase. Company representatives noted the extreme talent that has come from their Costa Rican branches, which is why they Costa Rica to be the sight of the new regional headquarters and to consider them first for any further expansion or investment in the region.

P&G has its main headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio and dedicates itself to making and marketing consumer products for mass consumption. Some of the most well known brand names tht fall under this umbrella companyinclue Gillett, Folgers, Pringles, Tide, Charmin, Bounty and Crest.

Those interested in applying can find more information here: www.pg.co.cr

Inside sources from the 2008 Imperial Festival organizers told Costa Rica Pages that it has been ”99% confirmed” that the Smashing Pumpkins will be joining the line up for the music festival that will take place on April 19 and 20th in Alajuela, Costa Rica. The official announcement will be made this weekend as part of the “festival route”, in which other guests are expected to be revealed as well.

The Smashing Pumpkins, a popular 90s alternative rock band with a distinct meloncholy sound, are known for hits “Tonight, Tonight” and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”. The band broke up in 2000 due to a number of internal problems, but regrouped in 2006 with lead-singer Billy Corgan, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and various new faces to record the 2007 album Zeitgeist.

They will be joining the 80s group Duran Duran who also made a recent comeback, and popular rock group Incubus in the international music festival that is sponsored by Costa Rica’s principal beer brewer, The Cervezería.

The “Festival Route” is a series of concerts that will take place in the three months leading up to the main event. This Friday night, Costa Rican music groups The Movement in Codes and Le Pop are scheduled to play in a concert that starts at 8pm in Retrovisor (a club behind the San Pedro Mall). On Saturday at 7pm, Kurt Dyer and Porpartes will perform at La Vereda in Terramall in eastern San Jose.

While the Liberia and San Jose airport renovations continue to lag, new airlines are continuing to jump on the band wagon to get a piece of the tourism action, destination: Costa Rica. With tourists flooding in from new destinations such as Denver, Colombia and northern Panama, the question is, can the country’s infrastructure sustain them all?

The newest arrival, Taca’s regional branch SANSA airlines, just inaugurated a new route from San Jose, Costa Rica to David, in the Chiriqui province of Panama this week. The new flights will depart Costa Rica on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sundays at 12:20 in the afternoon, with capacity for 48 passengers.

The goal of the new route is to facilitate business trips and increase investment and tourism in both nations. The Costa Rican Institute of Tourism estimated that about 50,000 Panamanians visit Costa Rica yearly, with an even split between business and pleasure travelers.

The new flights should help this number to rise, and allow businesses to spread beyond the border, as part of an initiative to promote cooperation between Central American countries through commercial bonds and the reciprocal exchange of tourists.

Over the weekend Delta Airlines inaugurated two new routes from New York’s JFK airport to the Juan Santamaría airport in San Jose and the Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia.

The San Jose flight will operate every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, while the Liberia route will operate on Wednesdays and Saturdays. These are the last of nine new flights between New York and Latin American and the Caribbean that were added by the airline since June 2006 in its largest expansion ever. Delta now offers 31 flights to Costa Rica per week, with the other flights from Los Angeles’ LAX and Atlanta airports.

Another low-cost airliner ATA also announced its plans to start running a direct flight between Miami and San Jose, as well as Guatemala City, on March 15th. The flights are already on sale and for $250 round trip with taxes. The airline has promised to provide food, movies, music and drinks onboard.

The flights will depart San Jose at 5:55pm and arrive at 10pm in Miami, and can hold up to 160 passengers. Current competition running direct flights from Miami to San Jose include American Airlines and Taca.

Last year saw a number of other international airliners inaugurating flights to Costa Rica, including Spirit Air and Frontier Airlines’ direct flight between Denver and San Jose, all of which are driving down prices to fly to the region. The majority of the new competition is directing flights through the Juan Santamaria International Airport, leaving a price gap between flights to San Jose and Liberia, which were previously available at a similar cost. The new Delta flight should help raise competition for flights to Liberia and hopefully drive those prices down as well.

At the turn of the year the Costa Rican tourism board were worried that this year might be a slower growth year for tourists visiting Costa Rica with regards to the delicate conditions of the United States economy, however new figures in have shown that tourism is still on the increase.

The latest figures to have come in from Canatur, the national tourist board, have recorded an increase of 13.7% in tourists over the January 2008 period compared to that of the January 2007 period. There were approximately 145,000 tourists in 2008 compared to 128,000 in 2007 that passed through gates of Costa Rica’s 2 international airports – Juan Santamaria International, San Jose, and Daniel Oduber International, Liberia.

The tourism board are delighted with current statistics especially in light of the economic situation in the Untied States. However they still remain cautious about the coming 11 months or so when the full affects of the economic downturn maybe affected.

The tourism board had already previously announced last month that they would be doubling their investment into advertising Costa Rica in the United States to counter act the potential loss in tourism from this market, whilst also investing more time and money into the European markets and the new up coming tourism market of China.

Delta Air Lines announced the launch of nonstop flights between New York’s JFK International Airport, and San José and Liberia international airports, in central and northwest Costa Rica, respectively. The flights are scheduled to begin this week, according to the airline’s press release.

With the new service, Delta is offering a total of 31 weekly flights to Costa Rica from the United States, including routes from Atlanta, Los Angeles, and now, New York, a press release said yesterday.

Delta’s flights come on the tail of an announcement last week that low-cost carrier ATA Airline would begin direct flights from Miami to San José, slated to start March 15.

Holders of the .co.cr Internet domain names face losing them in April. These domain names include those that end with ac.cr, co.cr, ed.cr, fi.cr, go.cr, or.cr, sa.cr.

While most of the online gambling websites based out of Costa Rica utilize either the .com or .net suffixes, email support and mirror websites often use the .co.cr variations.

After the 90 days starting Feb. 7, the nation’s domain registry will allow the names to be registered by anyone, according to a news release. The original owner will lose rights to the domain. In all, there are 7,380 second level domains registered with the .cr suffix representing Costa Rica.

The Academia Nacional de Ciencias which operates the domain registry, said it is eliminating all the double dot names in favor of a simple .cr suffix. The agency is charging $100 for each domain reregistration. In contrast, some domain registrars elsewhere in the world charge as low as $1.99 a year to register a domain name with a .com, a .tv or .info suffix.

ATA Airlines will begin a direct Miami-San José route next month, the low-cost U.S. carrier said.

ATA also plans to open routes to Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.

The Florida-Costa Rica flights, starting March 15, will cost $190 plus tax, Iván Casorla, sales manager of USA LatinSky, the company charged with ATA’s Costa Rica advertising, told the daily La República. The price would change according to demand, he said.

ATA will become the third airline to fly here directly from Miami, after El Salvador’s TACA and American Airlines. Its flights will be on the Boeing 737-800, which seats 148 in economy class, 12 in executive.

The flight responds to the high demand in the United States for Latin America, according to USA LatinSky operations manager Javier Araya.

IHG has announced the opening of the Crowne Plaza Corobici San Jose Costa Rica.

The 213-room hotel is now the third IHG brand in the city of San Jose, after the Real InterContinental Costa Rica and the Holiday Inn Aurola San Jose.

The Crowne Plaza Corobici San Jose Costa Rica, formerly affiliated with Sol Melia, will be the first Crowne Plaza in Costa Rica and another exciting addition to the growing Crowne Plaza brand in Central and South America where Crowne Plaza has 14 hotels.

“We are delighted to introduce the Crowne Plaza brand to Costa Rica,” said Alvaro Diago, area president, IHG Latin America. “We are certain that this property will have tremendous success because it fits perfectly within the Crowne Plaza ‘The Place to Meet’ brand positioning.”

Owned by Desatur Corobici, S.A., under a license agreement with a company in the InterContinental Hotels Group, the Crowne Plaza Corobici San Jose Costa Rica has been fully renovated to meet Crowne Plaza brand standards. The changes to the property include new beds and bedding in all of the guestrooms, a fresh new look in the hotel’s common areas, and refurbishments throughout the hotel’s interiors. The Crowne Plaza Corobici features ten meeting rooms that can accommodate up to 1000 people for corporate and social functions.

“We are thrilled to become a Crowne Plaza hotel, as the brand is well-known in North and South America for its Sleep Advantage program and excellent first-class service standards,” said Yukiko Nakayama, President of Desatur Corobici, S.A. “We are very pleased to be joining the IHG family.”

Guestroom amenities include: high-speed Internet access, dual-line data port phones with voicemail, coffee maker, hair dryer, mini bar, cable TV, refrigerator, iron and ironing board. The hotel features a spa and sauna, an outdoor swimming pool, fitness center, and a casino. It also offers two restaurants: Fuji, serving Japanese cuisine, and the Tropical Cafeteria, offering breakfast, lunch and dinner in a casual setting. Additionally, the hotel has designated two Club Floors, with a lounge offering breakfast and afternoon hors d’oeuvres.

Convenient for both business and leisure travelers, the Crowne Plaza Corobici Costa Rica is ideally situated in the heart of the commercial district of San Jose, five minutes from the financial zone, and only 20 minutes from Juan Santa Maria International Airport. The hotel is also located minutes from popular tourist attractions and recreational areas.

Founded in 1738, San Jose is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica. It has a population of approximately 350,000, and is one of the youngest capitals of Latin America by its year of foundation. Today it has grown into a modern city with a bustling economy and is considered to be one of Latin America’s greatest destinations for foreign travelers.

Consistent with the Crowne Plaza brand, the hotel offers a comprehensive meetings package to ensure a seamless planning process and exceptional meeting experience consisting of three key components: a Two-Hour Response Guarantee, Crowne Meetings Director and a Meetings Daily Debrief.

The Crowne Plaza Corobici Costa Rica offers the renowned Crowne Plaza Sleep Advantage program, which is available at all Crowne Plaza hotels in the Americas and encompasses the entire sleep experience, from training staff on how to create and maintain a restful environment to providing innovative products and services.

Program components include new bedding, guaranteed wake-up calls, designated quiet zones, night lights, drape clips, sleep CDs, sleep tips and amenities such as eye masks, ear plugs and lavender spray.

Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts also participates in Priority Club Rewards. With more than 37 million members, Priority Club® Rewards is the first, largest and fastest-growing guest loyalty program in the hotel industry.

Winner of the 19th Annual Freddie Awards hotel loyalty “Program of the Year” and named “Best Hotel Rewards Program in the World” three years running by Global Traveler magazine, Priority Club Rewards offers more sought-after benefits and the greatest ease of use of any hotel loyalty program.

Story be www.4hoteliers.com 

The Festival Imperial 2008 will return to Costa Rica this April 19th and 20th after its 2007 hiatus, featuring music by 80s band Duran Duran (left photo) and 90s alternative rock group Incubus (Right Photo). This year’s Festival is themed “La musica nos une” or “Music unites us”, and will take place at the Autodromo La Guacima in Alajuela.

Like children in a scavenger hunt, media and die-hard music fans flocked to Escazu this past Friday to hear festival organizers from La Cervezeria announce the top performers. The other confirmed guests include British groups Reflex and Wild Boys, Light Grenades, and Costa Rican groups LePop and Porpartes.

Rumors had been circulating since last year that the scheduled Dec. 2007 Incubus concert was canceled so they could perform at the Festival Imperial instead. Further rumors suggest that AC/DC, Daft Punk, Bon Jovi, Avril Lavigne, The Cure, Nelly Furtado and even pop star Madonna might make an appearance.

While these are only rumors, there is no doubt why fans have such high expectations for the event after the 2006 Festival lineup which included Jamiroquai, Sting, The Rasmus, Belanova, Vicentico, Tito El Bambino and Diego Torres.

The Festival Imperial has quickly become one of the most anticipated events in Costa Rica and Central America. To keep the anticipation and excitement sky high, the organizers have planned to announce the concert performers throughout the three months leading to the festival, at events along the “Festival Route”.

The Festival Route began in Palmares in January with performances by Fanny Lu y Bonka and Alek Syntek and Moderatto.

The rest of the concerts leading up to the main event will be announced later this week. At each event, organizers promised to reveal the names of at least three international artists that will perform at the Festival in April. The Festival Route will include performances by national bands LePop, Marta Fonseca, Parque en el Espacio, Kurt Dyer, Moonlight Dub Xperiment, The Movement In Codes and Porpartes.

The entire festival is being organized by AEG, a company that also organizes the Coachella Festival in Los Angeles. They have already promised to improve the setup for this year’s event, giving guests closer access to the main (and only) stage.

The event website, festivalimperial.com, will post new information as it is announced, and includes a running countdown to the event, down to the second.

Those with general admission tickets to the Imperial Festival this Saturday and Sunday will be getting more bang for their buck – the musical event’s organizers announced that a general admission ticket purchased for one day will be good for a free ticket to the other day.

Festival organizers had planned to charge for each day separately, but decided to change the policy “faced with a petition by thousands of Costa Ricans … including national artists, who wanted to go to both days at Imperial Festival, but saw that budget-wise, it was impossible.”

The festival’s lineup for Saturday includes Belanova, Vicentico, Gandhi, Diego Torres and Jamiroquai. Hector “El Bambino,” Miranda, Malpaís, The Ramsus and Sting are scheduled to perform Sunday.

A group of disadvantaged schoolchildren will show up for the first day of class this morning equipped with notebooks, rulers, colored pencils and other supplies thanks to the San José-based Association for Children’s Smiles (ASONI) of Cristo Rey.

The back-to-school gift pack came as a donation from Hotel Presidente and is set to benefit 315 children from two of the association’s shelters, one located in the San José barrios of Cristo Rey and Sagrada Familia.

We firmly believe that the best way to guarantee a healthy and successful future for children is through education. Education is the best way to keep youngsters off the street and safe from its dangers, said Hotel Presidente’s operations manager Katherine Carter in a statement. The hotel gave the gift, worth ¢3 million (about $6,000), as part of its corporate social responsibility program.

However, unlike these supply-carrying pupils, the schools themselves will not be so prepared. Costa Rican children by the bus load (almost 1 million) are descending on schools this morning for the first day of the new academic year, but public education authorities haven’t done their homework � and there might not be enough buses to get the kids there.

As of last week, the Education Ministry was still scrambling to hire school-buses and teachers.

The ministry officials said many school buildings are in dire shape and many more lack desks.

Jodi Lai The breathtaking Cataratas Llanos del Cortes is a secluded waterfall and beach near the city of Liberia

When you ask a Costa Rican how she is doing, she doesn’t reply with a curt “Fine, thanks.” Instead, she smiles and replies, “Pura vida!” And why wouldn’t she? The uniquely Costa Rican motto sums up what the beautiful country is all about.

Pura vida means pure life and the country is full of it. It conveys a sense of living in peace and harmony and appreciating nature. It’s the laid-back mentality that is really contagious when traveling in the country. Costa Rica is so peaceful, it doesn’t even have a military. It sees fire ants as its soldiers, armadillos as its tanks and toucans as its air force.

Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, Costa Rica is aptly named the Rich Coast in English because it is home to an astounding 5% of the world’s biodiversity. The mixture of dry flatlands, coastal plains, beaches, lush rainforest’s, mountainous regions and ancient volcanic regions not only account for this unique biology but also make for an interesting, scenic and unforgettable drive.

Costa Rica has won awards for the best coffee in Latin America and is becoming famous for the coffee that grows in its high-altitude volcanic regions. These high altitudes, however, also mean that cars in these regions are robbed of valuable horsepower because of the thinner oxygen. Rental cars in the country are mostly Japanese SUVs (as the average gas price in the country is $1.04 a litre, which is high considering the average Costa Rican makes only about $12,500 a year) that have big hood scoops to feed as much oxygen as possible into the engines. Some of them are equipped with turbochargers, needed for the boost to get up steep inclines in mountain-area roads such as those found in Monteverde’s remarkable City in the Clouds. All-wheel-drive SUVs are a must for driving Costa Rica, especially for rural areas and places where tourists don’t normally visit.

Although SUVs will make travel-ling much easier and safer, there is no better four-wheel-drive beast than a horse. To get to some secluded areas such as one of Costa Rica’s many astonishing waterfalls, horseback is the best and only way to go unless climbing up a rocky incline for half an hour is your cup of cafe con leche (coffee with a shot of steamed milk, a Latin American specialty). Although every step of the trek would be worth it to see the clear, secluded and stunning waterfalls, at the end, horseback will save you time and allow you to take in the scenery during the ride.

This might be the only time on the road that you can stop and smell the Red Ginger flowers (roses pale in comparison with the colourful indigenous flowers). The corkscrew mountain roads are mostly paved, but they are extremely narrow, undivided, flanked by large trees or cliffs and are usually unlit at night. A driver has to be on constant alert with high beams on for oncoming drivers and for stray monkeys and armadillos that are prone to wandering on to the road.

Costa Rican drivers, who are courteous and follow traffic rules well, seem to have an affinity for keeping their eyes open on the road. One of our van drivers was whipping down a winding road near the Arenal Volcano in the late evening when he suddenly slammed on the brakes. He slowly began to reverse the van.

Everyone on the bus was beginning to get nervous, when our guide stood up and asked, “Have you ever seen a sloth?” With a shared sigh of relief later, the passengers stepped out of the van and the guide pointed up to a two-toed sloth that was crawling slowly upside-down on a telephone wire. It was OK; the amazing thing was that the driver could fly down a steep and dark road into blind corners like a roller coaster, avoid accidents and still be keen enough to spot a dark sloth hidden by some trees.

If the driving is left to a hired driver, you can keep your eyes open for animals. Lizards and iguanas are as common in Costa Rica as squirrels are in Canada. Monkeys are less common in populated areas, but if one is spotted, try not to smile. Showing teeth is a sign of aggression for monkeys, and what they say about angry monkeys is true, even in beautiful Costa Rica.

Nature and wildlife preservation in the country is serious business, so venturing into some parks such as the Palo Verde and Rincon de la Vieja national parks promises a glimpse of howler monkeys (whose call can be heard from about a kilometre away), Capuchin monkeys, toucans, crocodiles and a lot of colourful birds and butterflies.

A week of exploring Costa Rica’s astonishing rainforests, volcanic hot springs, stunning waterfalls and diverse national parks and zip lining across tree canopies and canyons was incredible. My new dream: To go back and live la pura vida.