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Costa Rica carried out its second mass aerial deportation of foreign nationals today, sending 26 people to Colombia and Ecuador in an operation coordinated by the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería and the Policía Profesional de Migración. The Air Panama aircraft arrived at the San Jose Airport early this morning before the deportees were escorted from official vehicles to the plane by migration police. The flight left Costa Rica with Colombian and Ecuadorian nationals who, according to migration officials, either had committed crimes in Costa Rica or were in the country with irregular migratory status. Authorities said 19 of the deportees had criminal profiles or had completed criminal processes in Costa Rica. The cases included offenses related to narcotics, cocaine distribution, drug sales, attempted homicide, aggravated resistance, domestic violence and robbery. The remaining deportees were Ecuadorian nationals who had been detected in irregular migratory status...

Costa Rica’s plan to begin selling gasoline mixed with ethanol is still moving forward, but drivers may have to wait longer than expected before seeing the new fuel at service stations. The Ministry of Environment and Energy(MINAE), still intends to mix gasoline super with 10% ethanol as part of a broader effort to reduce vehicle emissions. But the start date is no longer certain, and officials have not confirmed whether sales can begin in 2027 as previously expected. The delay centers on Recope, Costa Rica’s state fuel company, which has been designated as the entity responsible for making the blends. Recope has told energy officials it will need to make acquisitions before carrying out the project, a process that could push back the start of sales. Once the government publishes the first decrees, Recope is expected to prepare a roadmap with clearer deadlines. MINAE expects to publish two initial decrees during the second half of 2026. One will define the institutions involve...

Every year, on a stretch of dark volcanic sand on the Nicoya Peninsula, one of Costa Rica’s most remarkable wildlife events unfolds. Thousands, and during the biggest months hundreds of thousands, of olive ridley sea turtles come ashore at Ostional National Wildlife Refuge to nest in a synchronized event known as an arribada. The word arribada means “arrival” in Spanish. At Ostional, it refers to a mass nesting event in which sea turtles emerge from the Pacific over several nights, dig nests close together, lay their eggs, and return to the ocean. For anyone trying to time a visit, the answer is not as simple as choosing a date. Ostional follows two overlapping calendars: the season and the moon. Olive ridley turtles nest at Ostional throughout the year, but the largest arribadas usually happen during Costa Rica’s rainy season, especially from July through November. September and October tend to produce the biggest events, when hundreds of thousands of turtles may come ashore ...

Hundreds of bus fares, along with selected taxi, train and toll charges, will shift up or down by a few colones starting July 1, as Costa Rica’s regulator rounds regulated prices to the nearest ₡10 to match the retirement of the ₡5 coin. The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep) confirmed the adjustment, which it says was forced by the Banco Central de Costa Rica’s decision to strip the ₡5 coin of its value as a means of payment on that date. With the smallest coin gone, any regulated fare that currently ends in ₡5 is being recalculated to the closest multiple of ₡10. The change is folded into Aresep’s regular six-month tariff review. For bus riders — the service that carries most of the population — the impact is mixed rather than a blanket increase. According to Aresep, roughly 48% of bus fares stay exactly the same. Of the rest, about 26.8% (1,288 fares) rise by ₡5, while a nearly equal 24.9% (1,197 fares) actually fall by ₡5. From July, ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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. ...

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...

Costa Rica’s Traffic Police have begun enforcing license and registration rules for “bicimotos,” the small motorized two-wheel vehicles that have become common on city streets and delivery routes across the country. The move follows an internal Traffic Police instruction sent June 11 to national and regional traffic chiefs. The 16-page document tells officers how to apply existing traffic rules to motorcycles with pedals and similar vehicles, ending the perception that many of these units can circulate like regular bicycles. The first focused operation took place Monday near Plaza González Víquez in San José, where authorities seized six bicimotos. Officials said enforcement will be gradual, rather than through permanent checkpoints aimed only at bicimotos, but drivers are now expected to bring the vehicles into compliance. Under the instruction, a vehicle is not considered a bicycle if it has an electric, combustion or hybrid motor that can move it without direct and cont...

A team of Costa Rican and Brazilian scientists has identified a new species of deep-sea fish living in the Pacific waters off Costa Rica, highlighting how much of our country’s marine biodiversity remains unexplored. The newly described species, Rhinochimaera costaricana , belongs to a little-known group of cartilaginous fishes known as long-nosed chimaeras, sometimes called ghost sharks. Although related to sharks and rays, chimaeras form a distinct branch of fish that has existed for hundreds of millions of years. The discovery was published this month in the scientific journal Zootaxa by researchers from Costa Rica’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Institute (INCOPESCA), the University of Costa Rica, and Brazil’s Federal University of Pará. Scientists based their description on three male specimens collected from Costa Rica’s Pacific waters between 2000 and 2023. The fish were found at depths ranging from 390 to 787 meters (about 1,280 to 2,580 feet), ...

A Brazilian surfer survived a rare and severe ocean injury in Costa Rica after a needlefish leapt from the water at Playa Pavones and struck him in the chest, puncturing his heart. Fabiano Duarte da Costa, a 42-year-old physical educator from Itajaí, Brazil, was surfing at Playa Pavones, one of Costa Rica’s best-known surf breaks on the southern Pacific coast. He was sitting on his board waiting for a wave when the fish jumped from the water and hit him directly in the chest. Duarte later said he felt the impact and a sharp pain before losing consciousness. The injury immediately turned a normal surf session into a life-threatening emergency. The first critical break came on the beach. A doctor happened to be nearby and began first aid almost immediately. According to reports from Costa Rica and Brazil, Duarte suffered cardiac arrest after the strike, and the doctor performed resuscitation on the sand before emergency responders took over. Duarte was first treated in the ...

I should have a near zero percent chance of recording freshwater eels with my camera traps. Not only are they found underwater, but they’re found in the type of water that isn’t easy to see through. Most eels prefer still, stagnant water with lots of detritus and tangled roots. I do have the only underwater camera trap in Costa Rica (shout out to Dr. Christopher Bunt , fisheries research scientist and developer of underwater camera equipment), but that camera needs water with decent visibility to work properly. The only way I could record eels is if some other creature reached into the goopy water, grabbed an eel, pulled it out of the water, and showed it to one of my terrestrial camera traps. Luckily enough, that’s exactly what happened four times over the last few months. My first camera trap video featuring a creature with an eel in its mouth was recorded on a drying cattle pond. An American crocodile emerged from the water and slid by the camera with a large eel in its ja...

Costa Rica could face its most significant El Niño-related weather impacts between this October and next March according to projections from the National Meteorological Institute ( IMN ), raising concerns about reduced rainfall, higher temperatures, water availability, agriculture, and wildfire risk across parts of the country. The IMN said the developing El Niño event is expected to strengthen during the second half of 2026, with its peak influence on Costa Rica likely occurring from October through March. That period coincides with the transition from the rainy season into the dry season, when El Niño’s effects are often felt most strongly. El Niño is a natural climate pattern caused by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. In Costa Rica, it typically brings below-average rainfall to much of the Pacific coast, the Central Valley, and the Northern Zone, while temperatures tend to rise above normal levels. Caribbean impacts can va...

The eighth Peach Festival opened today in Río Chiquito, a community in the San Ignacio district of Chalatenango Norte. Local producers and tourism operators host the two-day event through Sunday centered on the peach harvest in the northern highlands. The festival features guided tours of peach and strawberry farms, where visitors learn cultivation practices and pick fruit straight from the trees. Participating producers and cooks sell and serve peach-based products such as jams, desserts, natural drinks, wood-fired sweet breads, preserves, peaches in syrup and pupusas filled with local fruits. Some stands also offer peach wine made in the area. Tour operators provide packages that include transportation from other parts of the country, local guides and stops at nearby viewpoints and natural sites along the Río Chiquito. The highland location sits at higher elevation than lowland areas, which brings cooler temperatures and supports the fruit production that defines the event. ...

On a stretch of Pacific coastline inside the Golfo de Papagayo tourism zone, an ongoing standoff between developers and environmental advocates reached a new flashpoint this week after the University of Costa Rica’s governing council formally voiced alarm over a government permit allowing the clearing of nearly 750 trees to make way for a luxury resort and residential complex. The land in question sits in Playa Panamá, in the area of Carrillo, Guanacaste. The university’s concern centers on the planned clear-cutting of 748 trees spanning 22 distinct species, along with the surrounding understory vegetation. The cutting authorization came from SINAC, Costa Rica’s national conservation areas agency, as part of the first phase of a real estate project that includes hotels, residences, sports facilities, and other amenities, all on land that falls under the administration of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute and is classified as part of the nation’s natural heritage. The universit...

Mexico became the first team to take full control of its World Cup group on Thursday night, beating South Korea 1-0 in Guadalajara and turning what had looked like a tense Group A fight into a clear statement from one of the tournament’s hosts. Luis Romo scored the only goal early in the second half after South Korea goalkeeper Kim Seung-gyu failed to deal cleanly with the ball inside the box. Mexico then held on through a nervous finish, with goalkeeper Raúl Rangel making a late double save to protect the lead. The win moved Mexico to six points from two matches and, according to Sporting News, locked El Tri into the top spot in Group A and the Round of 32. The result mattered beyond Mexico. South Korea had also won its opener, making Thursday’s match the first real test of whether Mexico’s strong start against South Africa was enough to carry over against a faster, sharper opponent. It was not a fluent performance. The home crowd booed Mexico at halftime after a flat first h...

President Laura Fernández was rushed out of the Crucitas mining area Friday morning after a loud blast interrupted her official visit to the Finca Vivoyet property, where she had taken lawmakers to see the damage caused by illegal gold mining . The sound was heard at about 8:10 a.m. while Fernández was touring the site with members of her administration, governing party lawmakers and some opposition deputies. Security officers immediately activated presidential protection protocols, ordered people nearby to get down, and moved the president to a vehicle as reporters and other members of the delegation were pulled back. Authorities had not confirmed by late morning what caused the sound. Local outlets at the scene described it as a powerful detonation or a sound similar to an explosion. Security teams began sweeping the surrounding area to determine whether it came from an explosive, gunfire or another source. The scare turned a highly political field visit into a visible d...

Costa Rica’s sport and tourist fishing industry has presented a new strategic roadmap aimed at strengthening coastal economies, improving coordination with public institutions and promoting more sustainable use of the country’s marine resources. The Ruta Estratégica de Pesca Turística y Deportiva de Costa Rica was presented by the Federación Costarricense de Pesca Turística, known as FECOP , with support from the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica through the Central America Regional Security Initiative, or CARSI. The roadmap is the result of a two-year consultation process that included dialogue sessions, territorial meetings and collective work with communities and fishing-related businesses on both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. FECOP says the industry attracts more than 150,000 international visitors a year, generates about $520 million for the Costa Rican economy and supports roughly 33,000 jobs connected to coastal value chains. Those jobs extend beyond boats and captains to...

Costa Rica as thrown out a contested building rule at the center of a court fight over development in the Gulf of Papagayo . The rule had let developers combine their construction rights across separate plots of land. Executive Decree 45823-MP, signed by President Fernández and Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Chaves Robles, was published Tuesday in the official gazette La Gaceta (Alcance No. 76 to Gazette No. 110). It removes the “density and coverage compensation” rule from the regulations covering the Golfo de Papagayo Tourism Pole in Guanacaste. The change takes effect right away, and there is no grace period for permits or applications already filed under the old rule. The rule being scrapped, created in January 2024 under former President Chaves — who now serves as Fernández’s minister of the presidency — let a developer with more than one plot of land in the tourism zone move leftover building allowance from one plot to another, even if the two plot...