Tico Kids

Floribeth Umana started taking in neighborhood kids five years ago, while their mom's went to work. In order to support herself while caring for children, Umana joined Community Homes network, a government program that gives stipends to woman to provide child care in their neighborhoods. These home based day care centers were started in the nineties, allowing mothers to work. Fifty-six percent of Costa Rican homes now depend on two incomes, and the number is expected to rise.
Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica's first woman president, wants to form a national day care system. Her goal is to protect children from poverty at a very young age and have them on an equal footing with other chidren by the time they start school. The present system is insufficient. Home day care, like Floribeth Umana's, is declining. Chinchilla wants to make the investment in children now through a national day care system, and she hopes that it will pay off in the future.

Costa Rican Movies

They are starting to make movies in Costa Rica. Fewer than a dozen Costa Ricans have directed a feature film, but four movies with Costa Rican directors are coming out in 2010. Hilda Hidalgo adapted her first full length movie from the Colombia author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love and Other Demons. Her movie opened in Colombia, in the author's hometown, to rave reviews and she has a spot in the Los Angeles film festival. The budget for the movie was 2 million dollars, the largest ever for a Costa Rican movie.
What is so valuable about Costa Rican movies? It gives the people here a chance to display their talents, and it allows the movie public to see the world from another perspective. Most of the world is just beginning to learn about the beauty of Costa Rica, but along with the natural beauty we need to learn more about the people of this country. Movies are a great way to learn while being entertained.

Costa Rican Holiday

Image via Wikipedia August 2 is a holiday in Costa Rica. Everyone gets the day off. It is not presidents' day or veterans' day, but the it has to do with a young girl. The story of how this became a holiday goes back some time. A young girl, Juana Pereira, went out to gather firewood. She found an image of the Virgin Mary about eight inches high. She took the image home. The next day she saw another image and took that home. She thought she now had two images. When she got home, the image from the preceding day was not there. Juana kept finding images and they kept disappearing. She gave an image to the priest and it also disappeared. When the priest went into the woods, he found the image on a rock. She wanted to build a church on the spot.
This traditional story has become a symbol of equality in Costa Rico. The Virgin Mary is a symbol of equality of all people regardless of the color of their skin. A beautiful byzantine church was built in the area in Cartago. On August 2 the day that commemorates Juana Pereira's story, people flock from all over the country and walk to the great church in Cartago. People who cannot walk to Cartago have local walks to their area churches. The highways are full of pilgrims walking to their churches. Traffic slows down and moves along with the pilgrims.
This is just one way that the people of Costa Rica express their spirit and their traditions. All people have their local customs. Understanding customs helps us understand others and ourselves.

Pacific Costa Rica What were they Thinking?!!!

From what most of you have read you can see when it comes to the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica my main focus would be the Dominical area. I know this area well due to the tours we run hear normally and also working a little bit in and around the area in Real Estate.

The nice part about this area is that there are no large tour operators that is moving large amounts of people daily. For example in the Arenal area you might find a zipline that has 200 people a day or a rafting company that rafts 100 clients in a day. I have never seen that type of tour in the Dominical area and I dont think you ever will. This area lends itself to the type of service we offer on a Costa Rica vacation making the feeling a bit more private and remote.

Then why in the heck do they have a 150 person boat docked off the beach here offering whale tours. The whale tour is a great idea and there are quite a few small companies who do it (they could use a few more bi-lingual guides with more knowledge of the whales and dolphins). I can see their point because the small companies have small boats and the ride is very rough. But they will have to get a monopoly on all the tourist here to even get the boat half full just a few times a week.

It would be a shame to see one boat get all the people on their Costa Rican vacations looking for the whales as many small businesses make their living off these whale trips. We have kept an eye on this boat and I have not seen it move all week I've been here and we are in the Costa Rica family vacation high season. Have any of you seen the whales in Costa Rica? If so where and when?

Why 2011 is the Best time to Buy Real Estate in Costa Rica

I work mostly as a tour guide in Costa Rica and have been doing it for ten years. I have seen the country change quite a bit. Just two years ago I was watching young men my age become millionaires buying and flipping properties on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. There have been a few cases when clients from the tours have asked about real estate and have even returned to look for property in Costa Rica.

The area I know best when it comes to the central  Pacific side is the area of Dominical. It happens to be my favorite, the most green, and where the mountain meets the sea. In July of 2010 I toured a couple around for a week looking at real estate working with some realtors and seeing a few peices I knew of. What we saw was very interesting.

There is a lot for sale some of which are sales of people that want out because of the USA economy crash last year. But with all these things for sale we are not seeing much things being sold. Which if you are looking for property in Costa Rica and really want the best deals then maybe the best deals are yet to come. If the economy does not fix itself in the next few months like some might have expected it to then there will be more people needing to get out, more things for sale, and lower prices.

If I had the capital to invest in some land in Costa Rica I would wait till 2011 and get in. I really feel there is so much land down here on the coast in the hands of foreigners that there will be many more that need out which will cause a huge supply and not much demand and leave a gap there for very low prices. There is also much land left in the central valley. Right now more and more coffee plantations in Costa Rica are being cut into because of the growing population. The central valley is becoming a popular area because some of the best hospitals in Costa Rica are located in the Central Valley.

Its funny how things work. Before it was the Costa Rican selling his piece of paradise to foreigners to get a few dollars that they would have never seen any other way. The Costa Rican new how to live humbley and some kept there humble lifestyles and others splurged on new trucks and fancy living (for a few months then it runs out). What we have now is American's that need out only because they might have never knew how to live humbly. This might be the only answer to the economic problems. What do you think the answer might be?

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