Planning Costa Rica vacations for Semana Santa Costa Rica 2026? Know crowds, beach travel, road tips, prices, and smarter ways to enjoy it.
100 Years Since the Virilla Tragedy: The Morning Costa Rica Lost a Piece of Itself
On the morning of March 14, 1926, what should have been a day of faith, charity, and community became one of the darkest days in Costa Rican history. Families from Alajuela and Heredia boarded a special passenger train bound for Cartago, where a charity fair was being...
Easy As Pie In Costa Rica
(Adapted from Chapter 4 of Temporary Insanity-Costa Rica: My Way On my first full day in Costa Rica, I emerged from the cafeteria of the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center in San...
The 5 Costa Rican Cultural Pieces Worth Bringing Home
Most souvenirs are forgettable within a week. They end up in a drawer, on a shelf, or at the back of a suitcase with a faint smell of sunscreen and airport duty-free perfume. But the best things you bring home from Costa Rica are different. They do not just remind you...
Where to Hear Authentic Costa Rican Music
If you want the real sound of Costa Rica, skip the generic “live music” signs for a moment and look for places where culture is the point, not just background noise. The country’s musical identity is wonderfully regional: Guanacaste carries the bright wooden pulse of...
Sarchí to Studio: Costa Rica’s New Design Wave (Fashion, Furniture, Ceramics, Sustainable Craft)
Costa Rica has always been good at making things—clever, functional, beautiful things that fit the land and the climate. What’s new is the confidence: a generation of makers is taking heritage techniques (woodwork, clay, weaving, metalwork) and pairing them with...
Costa Vesco: The Fugitive Financier Who Tried to Buy Paradise—and Warped a Presidency
Costa Rica has always attracted outsiders with big dreams: coffee barons, banana kings, surf nomads, eco-idealists, and retirees looking for a softer life under harder sunlight. But in the early 1970s, the country also drew a rarer breed—men with money they couldn’t...
Mini-Festivals You’ll Only Hear About Locally: Costa Rica’s Best Days That Aren’t on the Big Calendars
Suggested lead photo A late-afternoon street scene: a cimarrona brass band leading a mascarada (giant papier-mâché heads) past a town church, with spectators on kerbs and mountains in the distance. What counts as a “mini-festival” in Costa Rica? A mini-festival is a...
Costa Rican Culture: A Rich Blend of Tradition, Family, and ‘Pura Vida’
Costa Rica, though small in size, boasts a culture that’s vibrant, warm, and deeply rooted in both indigenous heritage and Spanish colonial influence. Whether you’re strolling through a lively town during a festival or enjoying a home-cooked casado meal, Costa Rican...
What Circle Of Hell Is This?
[vc_row][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text The circle of life so lovingly narrated on nature documentaries plays out daily in Costa Rica. Toucans raid nests like feathered burglars. Iguanas—those smug, sunbathing “vegetarians”—will absolutely nibble the wrong...
Torunes: Founded by Fatigue, Fueled by Coffee, Haunted by Excellence
(and Now Buzzing with Bees, Beans, and Global Bragging Rights) Let’s rewind to 1897, when a man named Jacinto Avila Araya decided to climb a hill in Palmares so steep even the local goats looked up and said, “Hard pass.” After dragging himself up from the...
Brass, Beans, and Backstory: The Coffee Tokens That Shaped Costa Rica’s Plantation Era
Torunes Farms sits in Costa Rica’s coffee country with one foot in the present—soil care, thoughtful processing, and honest storytelling—and the other planted firmly in the past, when a harvest day could be measured in baskets of cherries and tallied in small brass...