The International Festival of the Arts (known as FIA by its Spanish acronym) is now just four days away from its 2012 opening. Once the FIA starts in earnest, residents of Costa Rica can look forward to ten days of arts and culture on the streets, in our theaters, and in open performance spaces around our capital city of San Jose.  This year marks the 20th anniversary of the FIA, an event organize...

March is shaping up to be one of the busiest and most interesting months for lovers of the arts and entertainment in Costa Rica. At the same time the Festival Internacional de las Artes unfolds around San Jose, the Arts Festival in Jaco will be taking place, and the Envision Festival gets underway in Bahia Ballena, the second International Design Festival will begin exhibiting at the former custom...

A change of scenery is all some might need to get writing going so I embarked on a five hour drive from my house to find out more about this most peculiar workshop. With unpaved roads, surfboards, yoga mats and a relaxed warm air seeping into every corner, Nosara is not a place one would consider as a prime literary destination, but one man thinks differently. Clive Matson is on the fourth yea...

“What color sand do you like?” I asked the puzzled tourist. “Do you prefer pink or black, full of shells or soft under your feet. Are you going swimming or kayaking, surfing or paddle boarding?” All he did was ask which beach I liked best, and in return the poor man got drilled with twenty questions. It is a simple inquiry that is getting more difficult to answer the longer I live here. The str...

On Day 3 of filming on location in the cloud forest surrounding the Arenal volcano, celebrated Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan was taking a morning stroll towards a quiet spot to think about the set up of the day's shots when he was stopped by a Tico crew member wearing a miner's head lamp around his forehead. The crew member was holding a menacing-looking venomous snake in his hands. “It...

In the past 30 years, Costa Rica has gone from a sleepy little coffee and banana producing country in Central America to one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, Feb 1st 2012 – Central America has had a very turbulent history over the past 150 years, and in many regions, instability is still the norm. However, throughout all of this chaos, one country has ris...

UPDATED Congratulations to the winner of the commenting contest, Ericka Castillo Arias, she will be going with her friend to the Festival Imperial weekend courtesy of The Costa Rica Star! Unfortunately Alex did not respond in time to claim the tickets to Imperial Festival, so we are resorting to another method. Tell us why you want to go to Imperial Festival on our Facebook page and we w...

The Costa Rica Star has recently published information about receiving your permanent residency in Costa Rica to avoid border runs, wasting time, and money. A few dear readers recently sent questions regarding a number of immigration affairs that visitors to our country regularly experience.  We have consolidated the relevant questions and answered them in this article for a more convenient rea...

The 5th Annual Atenas Chili Cookoff is February 12th and is created to help the Hogar de Vida (Homes of Life) for children in Costa Rica. Please join us. You can see more information about the chili event and activities by clicking here and visiting the official website. Here is a map to find the location. I Didn't Know Beans About Chili by Patricia Diekroger. Since I am on the committee f...

In the United States, as President Barack Obama and his family celebrated the birthday of civil rights activist and champion of social justice Martin Luther King, Jr. at his new memorial in Washington D.C., thousands of protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement planned demonstrations in cities across the country. The Occupy movement, which came to the world's attention in Septemb...

The twenty-fifth iteration of the annual festivities at Palmares has not disappointed anyone thus far; in fact this year's celebration of what has become the de facto end-of-vacation carnival for Ticos has been mostly characterized by being more orderly and less raucous than in previous years. Two of the three major events that make Palmares a massive celebration have already taken place: the tr...

*UPDATE* The winner of the 2 tickets to see Don Omar this weekend is: Nestor Fernandez. Here is a picture of Nester holding the tickets that he won. The Costa Rica Star will have MANY more contests in the near future to win prizes. Thank you to all who entered. Have a great weekend and see you at Don Omar at Palmares! *UPDATE* This Sunday January 15th at Palmares 2012, Don Om...

If you happen to be in Guanacaste while traveling in Costa Rica, you should definitely visit the Rincon de la Vieja National Park, one of the most ecologically diverse areas in the province. It will be the perfect opportunity for you to check Volcan Rincon de la Vieja, one of the country’s few active volcanoes. The last eruption took place on September 16, 2011, and access to the crater is stil...

Yesterday evening the family of Sir Richard Branson, Billionaire founder of the Virgin Group and Virgin Galatic, had dinner with former President of Costa Rica José María Figueres. Topics of discussion were the choice to abolish the army of Costa Rica, Tourism here, and doing international business. You can read more about the story behind abolishing the Costa Rican army by reading this articl...

CURRIDABAT – Carlos Alberto Valerín lives in a modest home in the heart of a bustling suburb located east of San José, not far from the Juan Santamaría Elementary school, where decades ago his musical inclination would first become apparent. It's the first Monday of the New Year, and Valerín (as he is known in the musical world) is busy messing around with the settings of a wireless router. “I jus...

It seems there is a star shower going down on Costa Rica thesedays: Brangelina and Miley Cyrus have been around for Christmas, and in just a couple of few weeks, on the 3rd of February 2012, no other than Sir Elton John is going to give a concert at the Ricardo Saprissa Stadium. From the 6th of January to the 19th of April, Elton John will be touring the American continent, from the USA all th...

National de facto news daily La Nación has published its annual list of the most newsworthy personalities and entities which consistently graced its pages with either positive or controversial developments in 2011. The following is a quick rundown of the people and entities mentioned and the category they made news in: National Affairs The global financial crisis left its most serious mark i...

Christmas Day may be over, but for most Ticos the holiday celebrations will continue until the New Year. For residents of the greater San José metro area, December 25th is the day when the greatly anticipated Feria del Zapote, located just a few kilometers east of downtown San José, happens. The Health Ministry gave the green light to the annual festivities which include bull runs, fireworks, live...

It's that time of the year when radio stations and entertainment journalists in Costa Rica begin releasing their “Best Of” music lists. Judging by the lists compiled thus far, the discerning musical tastes of Ticos are as diverse as the many animal species roaming around the country. British female contralto singers dominated business news daily La República's top ten albums of the year. The...

You may already know: Miley Cyrus and her boyfriend Liam Hemsworth are on vacation in our beautiful Costa Rica. As they hurried to get on a helicopter, Miley allowed some fans a few quick snapshots with her. Unbelievably, when she excused herself, one of them offended her for not having posed with all of them. In spite of this, Miley generously agreed to have more pictures taken when the fligh...

Be it in the center of San José or around the corner in your neighborhood, you may have come across stores called “Ropa Americana” which offer clothes for as little as ¢1000. If you haven’t explored any of them so far, this article might encourage you to give it a try – especially if you believe that being stylish is a privilege reserved for the well-to-do. It doesn’t have to be! Above all, don...

The beautiful Miss Costa Rica 2011, Johanna Solano, is currently one of the top contenders to take the title of the beauty queen with the best physique in the planet in 2011. The 21-year old stunner, who is a former Señorita San José pageant competitor, currently ranks at number six in the Reinas Universal Awards Best Body of 2011 list published by the online version of 20 Minutos, a leading news ...

The sad passing of acclaimed British-American political writer and intellectual essayist Christopher Hitchens did not go unnoticed in Costa Rica. Besides the requisite obituaries published in La Nación and El País, there was a small flurry of activity in online social networks by members of Costa Rica's digital literati. Social psychologist and open source software advocate Carolina Flores name...

Some of the most adorable arboreal creatures on Earth are being given a helping hand in a former bird zoo in Limón. Since 1992, the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Cahuita has been caring for “osos perezosos” -as sloths are called in Spanish- that need some sort of rehabilitation before being returned to the wild. Many of the sloths who end up at Aviarios are truly needy: they are orphaned babies. The...