Comments

• 

  Hans Pfister May 11, 2010 at 5:33am

  Arenas del Mar is #1 hotel in Manuel Antonio on Tripadvisor. Tripadvisor users voted best beaches in Central and South America. 1. Santa Teresa, 3. Manuel Antonio, 4. Puerto Viejo... I am happy to live in Costa Rica...
• 

  Kitty J. Pope May 11, 2010 at 2:52am

  Please visit AfricanDiasporaTourism.com, a web journal about culture and heritage tourism in places of the African Diaspora worldwide. Let me know what you think and sign up for the mailing list to stay in the loop. We could use some travel pieces on Costa Rica.
  Thanks,
  Kitty
• 

  Allie McCoy April 23, 2010 at 3:37am

  Mr. Balido, I used to have a Venus Fly Trap, which behaves in a very unplant-like manner, but this tree is even more improbable. I cannot think of any other plants besides these two whose behaviors are so much like those of animals. Can you?
• 

  José Balido April 21, 2010 at 8:41pm

  A walking palm tree in the Costa Rican rain forest??
• 

  CR Surf Travel March 8, 2010 at 6:43pm

  The biggest arribadas are at Playa Ostional and up by Witchs Rock in the Santa Rosa National Park. But the leatherback turtles primarily nest at Playa Grande, it is one of the three most important nesting sites in the Pacific!
• 

  Kat Morgenstern February 23, 2010 at 5:09pm

  I don't know about Playa Grande but I just read recently that there was a massive arribada, I think in Nicoya peninsula - I forgot the exact location, but probably still have the reference somewhere if I start digging. Maybe the turtles just went somewhere else? I know supposedly they return exactly to the beach where they hatched, but, maybe evolution is not that fixed? Galapagos sea-lions hithero only found in the Galapagos islands recently emigrated to northern Peru as waters have become warmer there - mostly likely also due to global warming.
• 

  David Paul Appell November 15, 2009 at 2:24am

  A sad note re Guanacaste's Playa Grande in today's NY Times:
  
  "...haphazard development, in tandem with warmer temperatures and rising seas that many scientists link to global warming, have vastly diminished the Pacific turtle population.
  
  On a beach where dozens of turtles used to nest on a given night, scientists spied only 32 leatherbacks all of last year. With leatherbacks threatened with extinction, Playa Grande’s expansive turtle museum was abandoned three years ago and now sits amid a sea of weeds. And the beachside ticket booth for turtle tours was washed away by a high tide in September.
  
  'We do not promote this as a turtle tourism destination anymore because we realize there are far too few turtles to please' said Álvaro Fonseca, a park ranger."
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html?_r=1...
• 

  David Paul Appell November 4, 2009 at 4:02pm

  I just came across a fascinating item in Americas Quarterly about the resignation of Costa Rica's Transportation and Public Works Minister because of a bridge collapse over the Central Pacific zone's Tarcoles River that killed 5 people. I have long said -- and pointed out in my book Pauline Frommer's Costa Rica -- that the country's roads and bridges are a disgrace due to blatant negligence and for all I know pocket-lining of highway funds. The last time I crossed the bridge into Quepos -- also in the Central Pacific zone and part of one of the country's foremost and best-known tourist resort areas, for god's sake -- it was a white-knuckle experience. Hopefully this may be a wake up call. As this piece points out:
  
  "The World Economic Forum recently cited shoddy infrastructure as one of the few wrenches in the system that has softened Costa Rica’s competitive edge. In the bridge collapse, roadway officials had heard experts’ warnings years ago and might even have had funds set aside to prevent the bridge's inevitable collapse. The problem: slow-paced bureaucracy—another notorious wrench in Costa Rica—got in the way."
• 

  David Paul Appell October 15, 2009 at 5:21pm

  Costa Rica again make's Tripatini's home page, with our Spotlight on Finca Luna Nueva eco-lodge in the rainforested highlands near Arenal and La Fortuna. After this week, you can find it in our Spotlight Archive, and for latest developments you may want to also check member Robin Jones' dedicated Finca Luna Nueva group.
• 

  David Paul Appell October 10, 2009 at 2:06am

  For those Tequicia fans who haven't already caught it, check out this week's "Top Tune from Around the Planet": the mellow, melodic "Boceto para Esperanza" from the Costa Rican group Malpaís; after this week, you can still enjoy it in our music archive.