Airlines, Car Rentals, Hotels, Tour Operators All Go Green

As part of its high-profile efforts to reduce global climate change, the national government will announce a new program later this month to bring “carbon neutrality” to the tourism sector.

Though today is not a legal holiday in Costa Rica, as the July 25 holiday legally moves Monday July 30, the celebrations in Guanacaste continue as usual as the region celebrates its 183rd anniversary of the Anexión del Partido de Nicoya, formally making the province of Guanacaste part of the Costa Rica. 

April 6, 2006There are a number of specific laws and rules relating to the purchase of real estate in Costa Rica that an investor needs to be aware of however, and this article covers this information together with a break down of the entire real estate purchase process in Costa Rica for foreign buyers.

The Inter-American Development Bank is supporting a charity biofuel car rally from Washington to Costa Rica.

February 2, 2007

In 2005, Dr. Luis Rosero-Bixby, a Costa Rican demographer trained in the United States, presented a paper at an international conference claiming to have discovered that 60-year-old Costa Ricans have the longest life expectancy of anyone in the world.

February 28, 2007

“We put Liberia onto the world map,” stated Lopez, regional director of sales for the Caribbean and Central America.

December 23, 2006

After five months of hard work at the plant created by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang near Liberia, plasma, the fourth state of matter, was produced.

July 26, 2006

From the Retirement Plan Advisor newsletter

In 2003, Barry Strudwick, a financial advisor based in Baltimore, Maryland, put together a partnership of 10 of his clients and bought a $1.75 million, 350-acre swath of land on the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica.

Given the growing popularity of Costa Rica often referred to as the "Switzerland of Central America,"....

December 20, 2006

The work is not finished yet, but transportation officials inaugurated a new boarding and waiting area at Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia Tuesday.

The officials said they expect 400,000 passengers to go through the facilities in 2007, a 28 percent jump from 2006.

Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias on Wednesday signed into law a ban on manufacturing arms, munitions and military equipment components, including the nation's duty-free industrial zones.

The law limits the number of weapons any individual can legally own and bans the sale of guns to minors. It also creates a cross-department committee to oversee the improvement of arms control in the nation.

The Liberia airport, Costa Rica's new international hub, is not precisely a beacon of modern transportation. The terminal consists of an open-air warehouse with a corrugated tin roof, cooled by an enormous fan whose main effect is to stir the grasshoppers into a frenzy. In the line for customs, visitors are kept company by butterflies and the occasional blasé frog.

Before visitors even leave the tarmac, though, smiling representatives from the local Chamber of Tourism are there to greet their out-of-town guests, most of whom have just arrived on the new direct three-hour flights from Atlanta, Miami and Houston. They press the real estate guide "Costa Rica Traveler" into newcomers' hands. In its pages, American visitors can find ads for dozens of different developments that will happily sell them a villa with an ocean view.

According to figures by the Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) - Central Bank - a good part of the dollars coming into country from Costa Ricans abroad is destined to buy homes, savings and investments.

The BCCR estimates that for 2006, us$450 million dollars will be sent home.

The majority of the 80.000 Costa Ricans (2% of the population) living and working abroad are in the United States.

Traffic through Daniel Oduber International Airport shows little sign of slowing with the news this week one US carrier was to add another eight flights a week, while a Spanish airline was actively seeking to be the first European into Guanacaste.

Continental Airlines, the World’s second biggest commercial carrier, signaled it would aggressively increase its market share of the country’s Pacific Coast with plans to double the number of direct flights from the US in June and July.