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Costa Rica’s Mid-Year School Break Raises Dropout Concerns

Costa Rica’s upcoming mid-year school vacation is drawing renewed concern from education specialists, who warn that the two-week break can become a turning point for students already at risk of leaving the classroom. The issue matters not only for Costa Rican families, but also for foreign residents and relocating families trying to understand how the local school system works. Unlike the U.S. or Canadian school calendar, Costa Rica’s public school year runs from February to December, with a mid-year vacation in July rather than a long summer break. This year, public school students are scheduled to be off from July 6 to July 17, with classes resuming July 20, according to the Ministry of Public Education’s 2026 calendar. The first academic period runs from February 23 to July 3, while the second runs from July 20 to December 9. That pause is now being flagged as a sensitive period for school retention as about 19,000 students did not complete the 2025 school year, and that dr...
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Costa Rica’s Small Hotels Face a New Era as Big Chains Expand

Drive the coastal corridor near Liberia’s airport today and you’ll pass a Four Seasons, a Westin, an Andaz, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, and a Planet Hollywood within a relatively short stretch of Guanacaste shoreline. Drive two hours south to Manuel Antonio, or out to the Osa Peninsula, or up into Monteverde, and you won’t find a single one of those names. That split isn’t an accident of geography. It’s the clearest evidence of a tension that’s been building in Costa Rican tourism for years: a country that built its entire travel identity on small, independently owned lodges is now watching international hotel chains expand faster than ever. Costa Rica’s reputation for intimate, character-driven hotels didn’t start as a marketing strategy. Many of the country’s earliest boutique properties trace back to the 1980s and early ’90s, when family homes were converted into small inns by owners who, often without realizing it, wer...
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How to Skip the July Traffic to Guanacaste by Flying From San José

Every mid-year school break, the same scene plays out on Ruta 1: thousands of families pointing their cars toward Guanacaste’s beaches, and a drive that should take a few hours stretching to eight or more. When accidents or protests close the highway, that figure can climb toward twelve. For travelers who would rather not spend a vacation day stuck in line at Cañas, there is a faster option that covers the same ground in well under an hour — a domestic flight from San José. Three carriers currently serve the route between the capital and the northwestern part of Costa Rica, according to a recent review, which priced fares directly through the airlines’ booking platforms for a sample late-July trip. Sansa and Green Airways both run scheduled service, while Aerocaribe focuses on private, on-demand charters tailored to a passenger’s schedule. Flights from San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport reach Guanacaste destinations in roughly 30 to 50 minutes...
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U.S. Lawmakers Urge Release of Salvadoran Lawyer Ruth López

Nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking him to press for the immediate release of Salvadoran human rights lawyer Ruth López. The lawmakers called on Rubio to advocate actively for her freedom. They also asked him to direct a U.S. embassy representative in El Salvador to visit her in detention and to apply human rights sanctions to bar entry to the United States for officials responsible for her arrest and continued imprisonment. López, 48, heads the anti-corruption and justice unit at Cristosal, a regional human rights organization. Salvadoran authorities arrested her at her home in San Salvador on May 18, 2025. They initially charged her with embezzlement linked to her past advisory work with government institutions and later shifted the case to allegations of illicit enrichment. The proceedings remain under judicial seal. She has spent more than 400 days in pretrial detention as of late June 2026. An initial six...
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Inside the Pecho de Rata Fortune and a Trunk Full of Cash

In his own recorded telling, it played out like a doting grandfather’s anecdote. Edwin López Vega — the alleged narcotrafficking kingpin known across the South Caribbean as “Pecho de Rata” — narrates a clip investigators describe in the style of a social-media “Story Time,” recounting how he told his four-year-old grandson to grab a banded stack of bills as a birthday present. He meant the green bundles, each worth about US$2,000. The boy, López says with evident pride, reached instead for an orange-banded stack — roughly ₡10 million, or close to US$20,000. “What can I do?” he asks his unseen audience, as if the child’s instinct for the bigger pile were a family virtue. That scene, drawn from the orden de allanamiento in the case Costa Rican authorities have code-named Riverside , has become the most-shared detail of an investigation already remarkable for its scale. It lands precisely because it is small: a single domestic moment...
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Costa Rica Cuts Tolls on Main Road to Jacó and Central Pacific

Drivers heading from San José toward Costa Rica’s central Pacific will pay slightly less on Route 27 starting July 1, when new toll rates take effect across the main highway linking the Central Valley with the coast. The reductions will range from ₡10 to ₡160, depending on the type of vehicle and the toll booth, according to reports citing Globalvía, the company that operates the San José-Caldera highway. For light vehicles, including most rental cars and private vehicles used by tourists and residents, tolls will drop by ₡10 to ₡30 at all booths along the route. Heavy vehicles will see larger reductions, between ₡40 and ₡160. The new rates take effect at midnight on July 1. The change comes from the ordinary quarterly toll adjustment for Route 27 and is tied mainly to movement in the dollar exchange rate. Costa Rica’s strong colón has lowered some dollar-linked costs in recent months, and Route 27 tolls are among the prices that can shift under the road’s concession formula. ...
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Costa Rica Upholds Construction Rules to Protect Wildlife and Water

Costa Rica’s First Chamber of the Supreme Court has upheld construction regulations for the buffer zone around the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, reinforcing local rules meant to protect sea turtles, aquifers and wildlife corridors in one of Guanacaste’s fastest-growing coastal communities. In Resolution No. 000725-F-S1-2026, issued on June 4, the court rejected an appeal filed by JBR Capital Ventures S.R.L. against the Municipality of Nicoya. The decision confirms a previous ruling by the Administrative and Civil Tax Court, which had upheld the municipality’s Temporary Regulation for the Issuance of Construction Permits in the buffer zone of the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge. The ruling is significant for Nosara , Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada, where real estate growth has brought steady pressure on water resources, coastal habitat and the refuge’s surrounding ecosystems. Ostional is internationally known for the mass nesting of olive ridley sea turtles, and the refu...
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