If it was 25 years ago, you wouldn’t want to go to San Lucas Island. The small, forested island in the middle of Costa Rica’s Nicoya Gulf was the roughest jail in the country. Being sent to San Lucas Island was a terrible prospect; prisoners’ lives were short and often spent in torture. Thankfully, today,...Read More
Creamy, gooey, mouth-melting, milk, white, dark, bitter, sweet … chocolate melts our hearts not just our taste buds. As the story goes, chocolate was once considered gold. Prized by the Aztecs and Mayans, and formerly reserved only for royalty in Europe, chocolate has held an irresistible allure for cultures worldwide over the past 4,000 years....Read More
Learning about a country’s culture is one of the fun and interesting aspects of traveling. In Costa Rica, an intriguing cultural location is the village of Guaitil in the northern Pacific province of Guanacaste. Located between the small cities of Santa Cruz and Nicoya, Guaitil is famous for its pottery in the pre-Columbian style of...Read More
Looking for a relaxing, restoring and uplifting vacation? Try a yoga retreat. A yoga retreat is not only yoga – add in getting away from it all to a beautiful and sunny place, exercise that makes you feel good, healthy and delicious cuisine prepared for you (as in, you didn’t have to cook it!), nature or...Read More
With Costa Rica’s most famous active volcano – Arenal – behaving quietly for the past three years, tourists to this Central American hotspot are looking elsewhere for exciting fireworks. There are actually six active volcanoes in Costa Rica, and another 61 that are dormant or extinct. For the past 50 years, Arenal was the country’s...Read More
Central America forms a bridge literally between North and South America, which throughout its three million year history has served as a natural biological passageway between the two continents. In the last century, however, much of that corridor has been destroyed by farming and urbanization. Biologists have determined that biological corridors are one of the...Read More
One of the most brilliantly beautiful tropical birds is definitely the Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao). Its loud, raucous squawks carry for miles, so usually you hear them before you see them. When you do sight a Scarlet Macaw in the wild, they are breathtaking – fire engine red bodies with sunshine yellow and royal blue...Read More
What if I told you there was an animal without lungs that lives on land and can grow back any limb of its body? Crazy, you say? Well, in the Costa Rican Caribbean rainforest, there is a species of salamander that can. Salamanders are amphibians that are typically characterized by a lizard-like appearance, with slender...Read More
Fifty-three tourism companies in Costa Rica have agreed to uphold the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). At the 55th meeting of the Commission of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for the Americas, held for the first time in Costa Rica from May 13-15, 2013, the national...Read More
Leading climatologists are calling on world leaders to take better action to control climate change after carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were measured at a disturbingly record-breaking high last month. The Earth System Research Laboratory, belonging to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii, measured its daily...Read More
Little was known about life up in the canopy of tropical forests until biologists started using ropes and pulleys to climb their way up. Treetops in the tropics reach so high that it was nearly impossible to explore. Scientists now know that about 90% of all of the organisms in a rainforest are found in...Read More
Your email inbox has 50 new messages. Your boss needs that top-priority presentation on her desk by midday. Your phone won’t stop ringing. Your smart phone is buzzing with more email and text alerts. Your work team has called an impromptu crisis meeting requiring your immediate attention. Your key assistant is out sick and your...Read More
Costa Rica’s southern Nicoya Peninsula is full of natural beauty and rich in biodiversity. Jagged and mountainous from its volcanic origins, with pockets of shimmering beaches, the landscape is a diverse transition zone between tropical dry forest and wet tropical forest. The Gulf of Nicoya’s placid waters stretch between the Peninsula and mainland. The tops...Read More
Visiting Los Sueños Resort on Costa Rica’s spectacular Central Pacific Coast is an enchanting visit to a paradise that is worlds away from the fast-paced daily grind. As I sat on the balcony terrace of my luxury vacation condo, gazing out at the emerald green championship golf course, and further still to the azure waters...Read More
Las guías Moon hacen que los viajes independientes y que la exploración de exteriores sea divertida y accesible. Su elaboración es llevada a cabo por turistas expertos quienes reseñan de manera sincera los pormenores de cada lugar, consejos estratégicos de primera; además de datos locales útiles y una buena dosis de buen humor. Por estas...Read More
About 50 million years or so ago, Costa Rica was a series of underwater volcanoes. Over thousands and thousands of years, layers built up until eventually they surfaced and continued to grow, just as the Hawaiian Islands do today. The Cocos Plate shoving its way underneath the Caribbean Plate also helped things along, pushing Central...Read More
My front door is starting to stick. The kitchen cupboards under the sink now won’t close, and my bedroom door is suddenly dragging across the floor tile. Is my house in need of repair? No, it’s just rainy season in Costa Rica. In the tropics, water and humidity play a major role in daily life....Read More
Tropical forests cover 15% of the globe’s surface and capture 25% of the carbon present in the atmosphere. These healthy forests play a critical role in curbing climate change. They “breathe” CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in trees and soil; in fact, roughly half of the world’s terrestrial carbon is stored in forests,...Read More
What are you doing for your summer holiday? What about a beach holiday in the tropics? Sun, sand, surf … Costa Rica is at the top of all popular travel sites this year. Warm water, abundant sunshine, palm trees, balmy temperatures, friendly people, and lots of great places to stay and things to do. This...Read More
The world’s environmental grades have been posted by Yale University. So, which countries are really “walking the talk” with their national environmental policies and actions? European nations are at the top of the world class, with a lone contender from the Americas – Costa Rica, placing 5th best in the world for its environmental performance,...Read More
It was a bit like playing bumper cars in the middle of Roaring Rapids. There I was, perched very alert in my high-tech individual rafting tube, bouncing off a rock to my left only to spin off a rock on my right and now speeding backwards down the chute to smack the huge wave in...Read More
Are you happy? That seems to be the question being asked in recent times, from boardrooms to bars, international conference centers to offices of government leaders, business schools to book stores. Are we happy? Following our bliss? Living our passion? Are we “me-focused” or “others-focused”? The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan even measures its country’s...Read More
Would you be happier living in a greener area? A UK study says you would. New research from the University of Exeter Medical School and the European Centre for Environment & Human Health in England has found that “people living in urban areas with more green space tend to report greater well-being than city dwellers...Read More
When I used to guide nature tours in Costa Rica, people would always ask me, “Are we going to see monkeys (or a sloth, toucan, etc.)?” I would always respond, “Well, it’s possible, but not guaranteed; it’s not like we put the animals out in their positions in the morning!” When we talk about the...Read More
