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British travel magazine Wanderlust placed El Salvador on its Green Travel List f or the first time in the 2026 edition. The publication singled out Parque Nacional El Imposible for its conservation work and community-led eco-tourism projects. The list recognizes 101 destinations, initiatives and places to stay that demonstrate travel can support ecosystems and local communities. Wanderlust described El Imposible as a forest home to endangered species including black-crested eagles, wild boar and puma. The park has faced decades of pressure from deforestation, illegal hunting and rural development. Eco-tourism now provides jobs for local guides who lead hiking, birdwatching and photography tours while steering people away from logging and hunting. Officials noted the coordinated work of the ministries of environment, tourism and foreign affairs together with local communities to protect natural heritage. The ministry called the park a vital habitat and pointed to visitor number...

Guanacaste is heading into another period of water uncertainty as Costa Rica’s long-promised PAACUME water project remains far behind schedule, four years after the country signed a $425 million loan agreement to finance the work. The project, officially known as the Water Supply Project for the Middle Basin of the Tempisque River and Coastal Communities, was designed to move water from the Arenal reservoir system toward some of the driest and fastest-growing areas of the Chorotega region. But the project has reached only 20.8% completion, according to figures from Senara reported this week. The delay comes as Costa Rica prepares for a possible El Niño-driven dry spell. NOAA said that El Niño is likely to emerge between May and July 2026, with an 82% probability, and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter. For Guanacaste, where drought and pressure on aquifers have long shaped public policy, the timing is especially sensitive. PAACUME is meant to take water from...

I just read a statistic that I find difficult to believe. According to worldpopulationreview.com , Hong Kong consumed a heart-racing 43 kilos of coffee per capita in 2023. This has to be some kind of record. I combed through other websites and found no other place or year anywhere close to this number. I thought I drank a lot of coffee. I go through a 250 gram bag a week, or about 13 kilos annually. In Hong Kong in 2023, I wouldn’t even have been considered a serious coffee drinker. Imagine how frantically zanged they must have been with that much high octane java flowing through their veins. Even considering that Hong Kong figure an outlier, Costa Rica is still nowhere close to the top of the list of the countries that lead in annual per capita coffee consumption, which I also find hard to believe. According to cafely.com , we rank 28th. Twenty of the countries ahead of us are in Europe. The long, dark, cold winters may have something to do with it. Luxembourg, of all pla...

Tourism between El Salvador and Guatemala is consolidating as one of Central America’s strongest growth stories, with millions of cross-border travelers fueling a regional boom in short getaways, beach escapes, and mountain destinations — a trend with implications for Costa Rica’s own tourism positioning. El Salvador received 4.1 million international visitors in 2025, extending a multi-year upward trajectory that has placed the country among Central America’s most-visited destinations, according to official sector data published this week by El Salvador’s tourism authorities and reported by elsalvador.com. The bulk of that movement is regional. Roughly 1.5 million Guatemalans crossed into El Salvador in 2025, accounting for 36.5 percent of all international arrivals — the single largest visitor group. In the same period, more than 1.75 million Salvadorans traveled north to Guatemala, making them one of the most important inbound markets for their neighb...

Expotur, Costa Rica’s main tourism business fair, will return to San José from May 27 to 29, bringing international buyers and local tourism companies together as the country looks to build on a strong start to 2026. The 39th edition of the event will take place at the Crowne Plaza San José La Sabana Hotel. Expotur is a business-to-business travel mart focused on connecting Costa Rican tourism sellers with selected international buyers through pre-arranged meetings. The event began in 1985 and is held annually. This year’s edition comes at an important moment for Costa Rica tourism. The country received 1,033,777 foreign visitors in the first quarter of 2026, an 11.3% increase over the same period last year and a stronger first-quarter result than in 2019, before the pandemic. Expotur 2026 has reached its full international participation target, with 140 buying companies from priority and emerging markets confirmed for the event. The fair is expected to bring together hoteli...

Costa Rica is bracing for an extended El Niño event that meteorologists now expect to grip the country from June through the second half of 2026 and persist into the early months of 2027, prompting authorities to activate a national contingency plan covering water supply, electricity, agriculture and wildfire risk. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional ( IMN ) has escalated its El Niño classification from “surveillance” to “advisory,” meaning forecasters now consider the development of the phenomenon highly likely rather than possible. The updated outlook is notably more severe than projections released as recently as April. The IMN now estimates rainfall deficits of up to 50 percent in some regions and temperatures running as much as 2 degrees Celsius above normal, compared with earlier estimates of 10 to 30 percent rainfall reduction and warming of 0.5 to 1 degree. “Those deficit conditions are now expected to be worse than they were a month ago,” Karina Hernández, head of th...