You may have heard by now that the answer to the question posed by the previous post was a resounding YES, as Laura Chinchilla was handed a landslide victory in yesterday’s presidential election.  She thus becomes the first “President-A” is the country’s history.  Of course the paper has been full of election coverage over the last month or more.  One story that really touched me was that of Chepito, Costa Rica’s oldest registered voter.  Chepito’s real name is Jose Delgado Corrales.  He is 109 years old.  Not only did the story say he was the oldest voter, but also the oldest election day volunteer.  Chepito lives in the Hogar de Ancianos (or as we would say in the U.S., “nursing” or “rest” home) in the Santa Ana section of San Jose.  He has been living there since its founding in 1995.  He is considered a virtual “icon” of the home and is loved by all.  Chepito is described by others as a “man of few words.”  He stands at a mere 1.5 meters in height (or about 4-foot, 8-inches).  The article in La Nacion stated that he loves to dance, draw and enjoys very good  health.  He will reach the age of 110 on March 10, 2010.  The story of Chepito shows just how much most freedom loving ticos cherish their right to express that liberty at the ballot box.  Chepito may not cut too long a shadow, but his love of life and tico pride speaks volumes. 

Link to Article in La Nacion

The answer to that may just be yes, as the latest Unimar poll data shows that Laura Chinchilla, the PLN (or Liberacionista) candidate is showing a strong lead over her closest competitors in the days leading to the election on February 7th, this Sunday.  To be declared the winner, Chinchilla would need to muster at least 40% of Sunday’s popular vote, otherwise there will be a second round of voting.  This is a constitutional requirement in Costa Rica.  Right now Chinchilla stands at 42%, with Guevara at 23% and Solis at 20%.  Chinchilla is the PLN candidate and has the full support of popular Presidente, Oscar Arias.  Arias has been busy lately cutting the ribbons to inaugurate the many completed infrastructure projects in the waning days of his administration…showing off a little just how successful his term has been in helping Costa Rica progress towards “developed nation” status.  Who do I support?  Well I am not allowed, as a non-citizen, to express support for any one, but I can at least inform readers of this blog the differences between the three top candidates.  Let’s start with Otton Solis, the PAC (Citizen’s Action) candidate.  Solis actually started his political career in Arias’ first administration back in 1986.  But the two just didn’t get along that well.  Solis has always been the anti-corruption champion, as well as a supporter of agriculture, unions and the environment.  His wife, Shirley Sanchez, is an important environmental lawyer.  He almost defeated Arias in 2006, losing by just a few thousand votes.  His major cause was heading the opposition against passage of the TLC, or trade agreement with the U.S.  I believe that gives you in a nutshell enough background to understand where Solis is coming from.  Guevara is the candidate of the Movement Libertario.  He once was a staunch advocate of the legalization of drugs, saying that money spent fighting the battle against them was a tremendous waste of government largess.  He has now changed his tune, saying that he has left such radical views behind him.  Ironically and perhaps a bit inconsistent with past views is his major platform for election in 2010, which is in being the candidate who will end “delinquencia,” or the rising crime rate that has all law abiding residents alarmed.  Would he be able to do so?  Well crime starts in the head, heart and home, which are all areas where we don’t generally like for government to intrude. In fact, a Libertarian candidate who claims to be “tough on crime,” would seem a bit of an oxymoron, would it not? Finally we have Laura Chinchilla, who like Arias, is a centrist candidate with positions that are strikingly similar in political ideology to a Barack Obama.  With her election surely the country can expect four more years of the same….but is that necessarily a bad thing?  No one can deny, honestly, that Costa Rica has enjoyed tremendous infrastructure improvement in the last four years and despite a world-wide economic crisis, things didn’t get too bad here as compared with many other places in Latin American and the rest of the world.  The question is, are the Costa Ricans, a Latin American population that certainly has not escaped stereotypical machismo, really ready to elect a woman?  Well, we will find out in just a few days, now won’t we.

Link to Article in La Nacion

1500 meters is all that’s left to complete the Costanera Sur, the coastal highway that was begun in 1962 and that stretches from Puntarenas to Palmar Norte, a distance of 280 kilometers.  It is Costa Rica’s only legitimate coastal highway.  The most troubling spot has been the stretch from Quepos to Baru.  A stretch of 42 kilometers that has remained unpaved for decades….until now.  I can remember the days of having to actually cross “bridgeless” rivers in order to arrive to Dominical.  Back then that short 42 kilometer (or 26 mile) trip could take you two hours or more.  Well, it is almost completed and will be the final missing link to complete the full breadth of the Costanera.  The only thing left is the bridge over the Rio Perla and a little 1500 meter segment that the government is having problems appropriating sufficient land to complete.  That’s because foreigners have been buying up land in the area in anticipation of the road being completed and thus most are absent landowners that the Costa Rican government is having a hard time bargaining with.  However, officials with MOPT (Costa Rica’s Agency for Public Works) assures that this final segment will be completed this year, around April to be exact, missing the previous deadline of December 2009 by four months.  That’s not bad since we all have been waiting 48 years for the Costanera to be a done deal.  Travel in Costa Rica just keeps getting better thanks to Oscar Arias, who by the way will inaugurate eight new bridges, as well as the Costanera itself, this week, in the closing moments of his administration.  Hopefully the solid progress in Costa Rican infrastructure will continue with the next administration.

Link to Article in La Nacion

I can remember hearing about this new “superhighway” from San Jose to Puntarenas from the very first time I set foot on Costa Rican soil.  Well the ticos have been hearing the same thing for the last 32 years.  It is not surprising that in the last few years folks grew a bit skeptical about the whole thing.  Well now all that is history because the road is completed AND, believe it or not, five months ahead of the scheduled June 2010 deadline.  While it may not be quite the caliber of the Florida Turnpike, the new highway will be pretty super compared to most now receiving traffic in Costa Rica.  So super in fact that the government has stuck its neck out and ”guaranteed” 45 minutes savings on the drive time between San Jose and Caldera. It should also cut the drive time to Jaco and beaches further south along the Costanera by an equal amount.  The average speed is estimated to be between 80 and 100 kph…and that is traveling pretty fast when it comes to Costa Rican roads (the old route had an average speed of around 30 kph).  All this comes at a pretty steep cost, about $250,000 million to be exact.  To recoup that there will be five tolls that will cost the typical car (a so-called “vehiculo liviano”) just under $3.50 using today’s exchange rate.  But one thing’s for sure, the drive to Jaco will be a lot safer than the old Monte de Aguacate route with its narrow lanes, hairpin turns and stomach churning precipices.  Probably won’t be nearly as scenic though…of course, gawking at the “scenery” is what almost got me killed several times traversing that old stretch of road.

Link to Article in La Nacion

Link to Diagram of Route

To understand the rich history of Costa Rica, one needs to know a little about the development of the railway system, mainly obsolete today, but in its time ushered in both prosperity and hardship.  A new book entitled El Correo Ferroviario de Costa Rica, by educator and philatelist Alvaro Castro-Harrigan, chronicles the advent of the railway as a means of mail transportation.  In 1857, the only way folks could expect to receive mail to make it from tiny pueblo to others parts of the country was via horse, burro or by foot, a process that could take months, if it ever arrived at all.  But in 1871 Minor Keith decided to change all that by obtaining the contract to build a railway from Alejuela to Limon, which was completed in 1890.  In 1897 work began to extend the railway to the Pacific Ocean and approximately 100 years ago in July of 1910 that work was completed to give Costa Rica a coast to coast railway system.  The advent of the railway as the major mode of commercial transportation ushered in a boom in the banana plantations and imperialist aspirations of the United Fruit Company.  The recent administrations of both Pacheco and Arias have sought to revive some of that old-time magic by restoring sections of the old railway.  Folks can now catch a free train ride from central San Jose to Heredia or Pavas.  There is also a tourist attraction ride that will take you from San Jose to Puntarenas.  But these days the railway is more of a novelty than a central part of Costa Rican life as it once was.  The book by Castro-Harrigan brings a little of that history back to life.

Link to Article in La Nacion

Much is written about Costa Rica’s biodiversity of plants and animals.  One of the primary examples is the variety of orchid species one can find in the county.  The orchid is the largest family of flowering plants with as many as 25,000 different species.  In Costa Rica 1,500 of those can be found.  Well that list continues to increase as botanists from the University of Costa Rica have recently discovered three new species in Parque Nacional Tapanti located in Paraiso de Cartago.  The species were found at high altitudes (2,500 meters or more) and are of the family Lepanthes, which contain miniature orchid varieties.  The first is the Lepanthes graciosa with translucent yellowish petals.  The second is the Lepanthes machogaffensis, which has a reddish flower that blooms throughout the year, but only for periods lasting three day.  The third is the Lepanthes pelvis, which has the largest flower of the three and which the scientists described as having no similar apparent relative except in the high Andes mountains of South America.

Link to Article in La Nacion

Since the 1800’s the Costa Rican boyero has come to represent the hard work, patience and love of nature that exemplifies the tico life.  While originally used to bring coffee down from steep mountain roads to the port for shipment to North America and Europe, these days the old-fashioned boyero with his ornamentaly painted “carreta” and prized “bueyes” is more of a Costa Rican novelty of history than a real functional part of everyday life.  Well, actually that’s not the case for everyone.  There are still a few real life boyeros (around 5,000 according to La Nacion estimate) out there and they are determined to keep the tradition alive, a tradition that for them has stood the test of time and technology and has been declared since 2005 as “Patrimonio de la Humanidad” according to Unesco (United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture).  The oldest active factory that still produces and paints the carretas (or, oxcarts) is the Chaverri Oxcart Factory located in Sarchi.  Founded in 1903 this factory has become a main tourist attraction for day trips from San Jose and is a place where you can buy a little piece of Costa Rican culture and history in the form of a miniature painted oxcart (however, the real ones are crafted there as well).  Just in case you wanted to know a little more about this time honored tradition, click on the link below to find a full colored graphic that explains in detail (and in Spanish), everything you ever would like to know about the Costa Rican Boyero.

Link to Recent Article in Proa Section of La Nacion (click ELEMENTOS RELACIONADOS for Boyero Graphic .pdf)

I have written many times in the past year or more about how the Turrialba volcano has been acting up, belching out tons of sulfuric gases and turning the usually deep green vegetation on its slopes to a ghastly yellow hue.  Well, Turrialba stepped it up a notch recently by showering the inhabitants of its slopes with a curtain of ash.  It seems a new pattern of natural disaster occurrence to begin every new year is emerging (as you may remember, on January 8th of 2009, we had the horrible earthquake that virtually destroyed the community of Cinchona).  The inhabitants of the farming villages along the slopes of the volcano have been evacuated, along with most of the livestock.  All that remains are a patch of domestic animals left behind and those are being rounded up as well.  Will Turrialba really “blow its lid?”  That is the question on the mind of the experts who are hard at work studying its every move of late, and lately there has been a lot of movement, both above and below ground.  There is no doubt that the magma is rising, just how far will it rise is the burning (pardon the pun) question.  New fissures and fumaroles seem to be opening up every passing day.  One of the biggest threats is that the volcano may erupt “laterally” as opposed to vertically and thus pose a much larger threat to nearby communities.  So far there has been little in the way of human physical injury (I did read that one man was overcome with an attack of asthma brought on by the ash) and analysis has shown that the ash, while irritating, poses no immediate physical threat.  But all that could change if things heat up a notch or two above what is already occurring.  Government officials have warned the curious not to try to get close to the colossal for a view, but it sure is tempting.  At just over 11,000 feet in altitude, Turrialba is Costa Rica’s second highest volcano, behind its twin big brother, Irazu.  I have always been intrigued by the enormity and beauty of it.  It used to be one of my favorite weekend getaway places (much like Cinchona used to be).  I also ran tours where I lead tourists down into the crater (Turrialba was the only volcano where you could actually descend into the crater).  I can remember having a friend take me and my bike to the top and the exhilarating feeling of breezing to the bottom with the cool wind in my face and views that seemed to encompass the entire country.  I hope that I will get to enjoy those experiences once again.

This according to experts from the Asociación Ornitológica Costarricense (AOCR) as announced in the most recent edition of their magazine, Zeledonia.  These species aren’t new in the sense that they weren’t before known to science.  They are “new” in the sense that none of them had ever before been seen in Costa Rica.  The first is the “pardela de pascua (scientific, Puffinus nativitatis).  This bird is normally seen around the Hawaiian islands and it is estimated that only around 5,000 remain in existence.  The species was observed in April of this year flying above the ocean surface some 50 kilometers to the west of Cabo Blanco in Puntarenas.  The second is the “azor ventigrís” (scientific, Accipiter poliogaster).  This is a bird of prey and is usually found in tropical forests of low lying areas.  They are found in many parts of South America.  It is known to have a grayish colored breast.  Experts observed this specie in a secondary forest of the river Puerto Viejo, in Sarapiquí.  The third is the “gaviota tridáctila” (scientific, Rissa tridactyla).  This specie is charaterized by its large yellow beak, white head and body, and greyish colored back and wings. This is a bird always found near the ocean, normally of the Northern Hemisphere.  However, bird experts observed this specie in the mouth of the river Tortuguero located in Tortuguero National Park.  The last two birds new to Costa Rica are colibris.  The first is the “veraguan mango” (scientific, Anthracothorax veraguensis).  Previously thought to be unique to Panama, this specie was observed in a garden in Golfito, Puntarenas.  The vergaun mango is listed as a specie in danger of extinction.  The fifth is the specie of colibri (or hummingbird) with the scientific name, Lepidopyga coeruleogularis.  This specie was observed in the same general area as the veraguan mango.  Both species of colibris are generally found feeding on the red flower known as the Erythrina and have a green metalic color with beaks almost as large as their bodies.

Link to Article in La Nación

Costa Rican authorities plan to present their shining example to the world during next weeks World Summit on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen.  An example of how to achieve economic development along with protecting the environment.  However, such plans may fly in the face of a recent report that Costa Rica is not developing all that sustainable after all.  This according to the country’s own internally developed report entitled Estado de la Nación that was the subject of a recent post in the blog, Strictly Business Costa Rica.  Nevertheless Costa Rica can present some action to back up all the talk, which is more than can be said for many who will be attending, like the U.S. and China for example.  What has Costa Rica done to put some walk into the talk?  Well the creation of multiple areas of environmentally protected territory, which has elevated Costa Rica’s status as a world-class eco-tourism destination.  The Payment for Environmental Services (or PSA) program is another specific measure Costa Rica has taken in which landowners are paid to re-forest instead of de-forest.  A means by which the country has “protected” another 11% of of national territory that is privately owned, or some 626,498 hectares covered by 85 million trees.  All this makes Costa Rica one of the few tropical countries that have been able to reverse the trend of deforestation to the extent that now some 48% of the entire country is covered with forests.  Since 1997 the coverage of territory by forest growth has been increasing at a rate of 0.66% per year.  Finally, the committee that will present at the summit can boast that in Costa Rica 76% of electrical energy is produced with renewable sources (water, wind and geothermal), making the country much less dependent on oil than most others.  Costa Rica has expressed a future commitment to world climate change by vowing to be “carbon neutral” by the year 2021, the so-called program of Paz con la Naturaleza (Peace with Nature). With all that said, I guess Costa Rica does have room to talk.  The President of the Republic, Oscar Arias, is schedule to do just on the 16th of December, the day prior to the summit’s closing.

Link to Article in La Nación