Costa Rica Vacation

We have a curious little insect here in Costa Rica that we call the “leaf cutter ant.” One day I was doing a canopy tour with a couple of buddies from South Carolina. Out in the jungle we came across a line of leaf cutter ants. The ants are curious because each one will be carrying a freshly cut piece of green jungle leaf of some variety. As the tourists gazed at the marching ants, Jim...

That’s what the consensus was of those attending the First Annual Eco- and Sustainable Tourism Conference at the Hotel Herradura when it came to the role of Costa Rica in sustainable tourism.  Specifically, Bruce Poon Tip, founder and Executive Director of GAP Adventures, a worldwide adventure tourism company, told La Nación that Costa Rica is “out in front” of all others when ...

Life, it seems at times, is about conflict. I have been reading through the book of Genesis lately and wondering just where, when and how the conflict that now engulfs and threatens the world, received its initial spark. My life certainly has not been immune from conflict. Some people seem to relish in it. Not me. I have never been one to seek it out. But you don’t have to with conflict, it ...

November 4, 1991, a date that I will never forget. You came into the world that day, a little bruised and battered from the trip. I remember spending hours watching you under the bright lights. You were number two to arrive and I remember fearing whether our luck had run short too quickly. But everything turned out more than well. And here we are eighteen years later. I have always admired your ki...

Lately I am reading the book by Robin Sharma entitled, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. It has me thinking about what I am doing and why. I have always been a driven person, but for a long time what was driving me was the idea of having things….like a Ferrari. The most I was ever able to achieve was a Jeep Grand Cherokee on lease, but you get the idea. No but really, the book has me thinking a...

Someone in my company read one of my posts the other day and commented, “hey boss, that one was a bit politically incorrect, wasn’t it?” After firing him, I responded, “well, I hope so.” There is speech that is downright degrading, demeaning and despicable. That kind of speech is not aimed at intellectual stimulation, but rather to foment someone’s hateful ideas...

I was watching a movie last night entitled Sin Nombre. It is a movie about a family trying to make it from somewhere (I believe) in Central America, perhaps El Salvador, to the U.S. Their lives, especially that of the teenage daughter, Sayra, become intertwined with a member of the street gang, Salvatruchas, who joins their trek while fleeing from gang members seeking revenge for his murder of the ...

I wrote the other day in my other blog, Tiquicia, about an incident involving a tica periodista (female Costa Rican news reporter) who had an incident with the police during a U2 concert in Florida. In the post I recalled what I felt was an analogous incident involving my ex-girlfriend with the Immigration authorities in Charlotte, North Carolina. Low and behold, it seems that someone associated w...

Just got back from spending three days in the beautiful colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua. I have visited the city many times and always enjoy my time there. This time I discovered that in addition to the rustic colonial architecture, the historical significance (Granada was founded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1524), the great food, arts and crafts and vibrant nightlife, Granada also ...

Things are actually pretty rosey these days. I am all moved in to my new home. While I did experience a bit of “trepidation” about the move initially, now I’m really loving it. And I got orange and mango trees in my backyard! What is really great is that my office is now separate from the house, even though both are part of the same property. That really helps with the commute, a...

I often update readers on books that I have read, or am in the process of reading. Recently I have been reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. You might remember from statistics class that an “outlier” is a statistical observation that is markedly different in value or position from others in a random sample. In the book, Gladwell’s outliers are those who have achieved wh...

According to an article that appeared in La Nación that details a study done by scientific researchers at the University of Costa Rica, Universidad Nacional and Universidad de Ciencias Médicas.  The researches first began studying the monkeys in 2001 and since then have studied 1,000 individuals.  The research reveals that in estimation there are 104,000 monkeys in Costa Rica of the four speci...

I’m old enough to remember those old Timex commercials. You know the ones featuring various “torture tests” that proved that the Timex could “take a licking and keep on ticking.” I was thinking this morning that, you know, Costa Rica has a similar quality. Since I have been living here I have seen Costa Rica’s resiliency proven time and time again. First there w...

Just six kilometers from where their scenic little pueblo was washed away by the torrential landslides provoked by the earthquake of January 8, 2009, former residents of CInchona are building a new, model community.  The “new Cinchona” will be populated by the 80 families that lost their homes, many their loved ones, and for the past year have been completely displaced and dispersed ...

This weekend I visited the area where the 6.2 earthquake occurred early this year (January 8th to be exact). Wow it seems like it was longer ago than that! I am talking about Vara Blanca, and specifically, the Peace Lodge. Other than Cinchona, which was virtually wiped off the map and still unreachable, these were the areas hardest hit by the quake. We toured the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, which ha...

The other day I found out that one of my employees has become interested in the teachings of motivational guru, Anthony Robbins. I dusted off my “Personal Power II” tapes that I purchased back in 1995, when I was about to embark on a major career change, and presented them to him. He, in his early 30’s, asked me, puzzled, if those were actually “cassette tapes?” A lot ...

The Río San Juan, that is.  That’s why the Canadian-owned Las Crucitas Mine Project wants to mine for gold there.  However, environmentalists aren’t so enthused about the idea.  Seems that in order to extract gold from the rock, the miners use a substance called “cyanide.” Yea, that’s the same stuff the double-naught spies use to “bite the bullet” when ...

And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Ecclesiastes 4:4 I want to be rich! Ever had that thought? I have. But why? The verse above offers up an intriguing and thought provoking explanation. Obviously it is not completely true, because, after all, a man’s gotta eat. But normally ...

Can you believe those Norwegian nut-cases? How can they award the Nobel Peace Prize to a sorry no-count good-for-nothing loser like Barack HUSSEIN Obama? I mean what has he done to deserve a prize from a cracker-jack box, much less the Nobel Prize? I’m just downright “et-up” about it! They’d just as well given the damn prize to my dog Cash….he don’t bite! And th...

Unlike the U.S., where they give cash for “clunkers” (or old gas-guzzling cars) in order to stimulate the economy, here in Costa Rica they give cash for trees, or at least not to cut them down.  The program is called the Pago de Servicios Ambientales (PSA) and is part of the Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal (Fonafifo).  You see at one time Costa Rica was not so green and bea...

Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. Such were the musings of perhaps the wisest of all men. But why? I was reading Ecclesiastes this morning and that question really had the gears grinding in my head. Solomon later writes that “man has no advantage over the animal.” The same fate awaits them both. Pretty dreary perspe...

Yesterday’s post focused on villains. Today let’s get back onto a positive note and talk about heroes. Who are your heroes? I asked myself that the other day. Why? Because I believe we can see in our heroes what we would like to see in ourselves. I can remember when my heroes were guys like Donald Trump. My heroes were those calculating captains of industry who know how to turn a meage...

Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier, former president of Costa Rica from 1990 to 1994, was sentenced this week to five years in prison in a corruption scandal. Calderón had planned to run in the upcoming presidential election, but withdrew his candidacy once the sentence was handed down. Calderón is the son of the infamous Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia, president of Costa Rica from 1940 to 1944. ...

Does there have to be a reason for everything? Is there a reason why that acorn fell on that particular patch of ground to produce that enormous oak tree? Was it suppose to be that way…was it “predestined?” The title of this blog is 365 Reasons I Love Costa Rica. But why 365? Why not the top ten reasons, or twenty-five reasons, or one hundred reasons? It seems that we humans suff...

I must say I am a little “fertummelt” this morning. Seems I heard (at least I think I heard) on the news that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish, or at least part Jewish. I feel a little “fermisht” at the very thought. Surely Mahmoud knew about this. I mean this is part of his own family history, right? Iranian authorities quickly dismissed the reports as being nothing more than ...