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Tips for Costa Ricans to Get US Visas

If you are looking to get a US visa there are some tips that help up to 93.51% of Costa Ricans who apply get granted a visa. You’ll be well on your way to enjoying New York, Hawaii, Miami or Vegas.

First, you can save money by filling out your own DS-160 form online instead of paying a service to do it. Make sure to specify that you are applying for a non-immigrant visa, in the tourism category. Answer everything truthfully. You will be able to add digital photographs but will also need printed photos. At a photographic studio let them know you need pictures that meet the requirements for a US visa.

After uploading photos, proofread your answers and press the upload key. Keep the ID number it gives you. Print the first page where your name and a bar code appear. This barcode is needed for access to the Embassy on the day of your appointment. Lastly, pay $160 via debit card or Servimás. The next day you will be able to sign in and pick an appointment time.

Bring documents to demonstrate roots in Costa Rica to the appointment. These can be bank account statements, proof of employer or salary, or others. At the Embassy you will have fingerprints taken and go to an interview. Visas are delivered via Correos de Costa Rica.

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Costa Rican Surfer Defeats Leader

A Tica, Brisa Hennessy, defeated the previous leader, American Caroline Mark, in the maximum surf circuit on the planet. The Women’s World Tour took place in Australia and advanced to the third round.

Her aggressive style impressed fans and got her high scores on the second date of the competition in Bells Beach, Victoria. She was previously crowned Pan American champion in Lima, Peru.

Hennessey wears number 99 on her uniform alongside the Costa Rican flag. She and Marks, who won the first leg of the circuit, both demonstrated great techniques. Hennessey added the highest wave of the tournament, 8.33.

Brisa said the “waves have been incredible and I felt very good.” She will also compete in the Pan American Games and is hoping to secure a position in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. She was born in Costa Rica and moved with her family to Hawaii and Fiji to improve her surfing and become a professional athlete.

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Haunted Cambodia

I have never placed boots-on-the-ground in Cambodia, but I flew over Cambodia, when I was leaving Bangkok, Thailand. As I was looking at the rice fields of Cambodia from my plane going home, I couldn’t help but think on how haunted Cambodia must be. Cambodia has a lot of history, a lot of horrific history. Over two million people died in the Killing Fields during the Khmer Rouge Regime. 

Cambodians have a strong belief in ghosts, in fact they will leave Spirit Boxes next to their front door. They will fill the Spirit Box with food and drink for wandering spirits that are hungry and thirsty. The food and drink for the spirits are to appease the spirits and allow them to keep on wandering and not enter their home. Cambodians have a holiday called Pchum Ben and that is when the Pchum Ben ghosts come out. The Pchum Ben Ghosts will arrive on the Pchum Ben holiday and hang out for 7 days. The Pchum Ben ghosts are recognized, due to their pinhole mouths.

TINSEL MAN Charya, a Cambodian lady says that she actually encountered a Pchum Ben Ghost in which she calls Tinsel Man. Charya encountered the ghost in 1994 on the Pchum Ben holiday. She describes it as having a pinhole mouth and wearing an outfit that seemed to be made up of tinsel. Tinsel Man followed her around and then finally vanished. Two years later, Charya encounters Tinsel Man again, but this time at her home. Tinsel Man was sitting on her recliner chair. Tinsel Man got up and placed his pinhole mouth on her neck and then vanished. Charya looked in the mirror and saw that there was a pin hole mark on her neck and blood was running down her neck. Charya went to her Buddhist Church for guidance and has not been bothered again by Tinsel Man.

Locals say that many spirits roam the countryside. Many people have witnessed apparitions in the fields. Legend has it that there are many lost souls in the countryside. The belief of Cambodians is that spirits are unable to crossover if they died a violent death, suicide or lived sinful lives. These spirits cannot go into the light. Since genocide was practiced by the Khmer Rouge Regime, many of the victims in the fields died horrible deaths. 

PHNOM PENH HIGH SCHOOL SPIRITS In Cambodia if you practice sorcery or dabble in black magic, you could lose your life. In 2014, a man was butchered for practicing black magic and in 1985, a woman was murdered for practicing sorcery. At Phnom Penh High School during the Khmer Rouge Regime the high school was used as a prison camp, it was called Security Prison 21. There were 20,000 prisoners and only 7 survived. The ones that died were brutally tortured by the Khmer Rouge Regime. Witnesses to the ghosts of Phnom Penh High School have seen objects being violently slammed to the floor.  Witnesses have also heard high pitched screaming. 

MACHETE MAN As a ghost hunter, sometimes I get silly questions.  Recently, a ghost hunting enthusiast asked me if I felt the Winchester Mansion was the most haunted place on Earth?  My answer was absolutely NO!  How can you compare the Winchester Mansion to various places in the world, where thousands or even millions of people died?  How can you compare the Winchester Mansion with the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the Winchester Mansion with the atrocities that occurred at the Bridge over River Kwai? (Special Note: Yes, when I was in Thailand, I visited this place – Paul).  Borey from Cambodia tells me that when he left Sacramento to visit his family in Cambodia, he paid his respects at the Killing Fields, a place where he lost his uncle, aunt and nephew.  Borey had a paranormal experience in the Killing Fields, he encountered the Machete Man.  From a distance he saw a man in a military uniform and his eyes were glaring with hatred as he gazed upon Borey.  Borey was scared and knew this was either an angry ghost or a demon.  Machete Man started to walk swiftly over to Borey and when he reached Borey he took his machete and took a swing at Borey.  Borey could feel the hot sting of the machete and fell back.  Borey took a while to recover and when he did the Machete Man was gone and he had a red mark across his chest, but there was no cuts.  Borey will never forget this paranormal moment in his life.  

With 2 million people dying in the Killing Fields from starvation, exhaustion, torture and murder, Cambodia must be one of the most haunted places in the world.

By Paul Dale Roberts, HPI’s Esoteric Detective Halo Paranormal Investigations www.cryptic916.com/ Sacramento Paranormal Help www.facebook.com/HaloParanormalInvestigations/ Email: jazmaonline@gmail.com

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As Civilization Collapses, A Turning?

Many people on this Earth Day are concerned about ecological and civilizational collapse. Some think it’s happening, and will spell our extinction as a species. Others think it can still be prevented. Few realize that self-knowing and psychological revolution are essential to humankind changing course.

Many thinkers intellectually understand that “the underlying disease is one of separation: separation of mind from body, separation from each other, and separation from nature.”

Rather than question the roots of separation within however, they offer half-baked philosophical diagnosis: “Humans, as essentially disconnected began in agrarian civilizations, was exacerbated with the Scientific Revolution, and has been institutionalized by global capitalism. That has set us on this current path to collapse.”

That’s misleadingly half true. The cognitive revolution of ‘higher thought’ is what gave rise, over thousands of years, to the present human crisis. Though the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions (not to mention the Digital Revolution) were catalysts, the roots lie much deeper.

Even the mainstream media has jumped on the fatalistic bandwagon. A recent op-ed in the WAPO (Washington Post) goes all in: “The present’s contribution to posterity will be the 620,000 square miles of disposable floating plastic trapped in the North Pacific Gyre, with a half-life of between 450 and 800 years. In such conditions, the desire to see the world can only ever be the desire to see the world falling apart…I cannot think of anything to do with this world except to see it, to show it, even as it burns.”

That bracing bit of nihilism came after the writer confessed, “As I watched Notre Dame Cathedral burn on a live stream, my first thought, unbidden and grotesque, was that at least my son had a chance to see it.” Misanthropy grows in the darkness of abstraction.

Such self-centered resignation, such perverse detachment, is being passed from jaded fathers and mothers to their offspring. Why did the WAPO man have children?

Some hold out hope, refusing to see that hope is simply the flipside of despair. “There’s a possibility that the cognitive system transforms into a newly dominant paradigm—an ecological worldview that recognizes the intrinsic interconnectedness of all forms of life on earth, and sees humanity as embedded integrally within the natural world.”

“We [therefore] have a profound moral obligation to step up and rebel against the structures that are causing this harm… It’s a relay race against time in which every one of us is part of the team… our collective actions are ultimately what will create the future.”

That prescription is spiritually bankrupt, philosophically juvenile, and politically unworkable.

It’s pointless to say, “The meaning we derive from our existence must arise from our connectedness if we are to succeed in sustaining civilization: connectedness within ourselves, to other humans, and to the entire natural world.”

“Connectedness” is a worthless word. It upholds an illusory ideal, and offers no insight into the human condition and conundrum. It’s like the posters in Paris during COP21: “We are not fighting for nature. We are nature defending itself.”

That sounds wonderful, but it’s worse than empty tautology, since man is not nature, but has separated himself from nature.

Humans are separate from nature because we use the evolutionary adaptation of ‘higher thought,’ which gave us the ability to separate things from nature for use, without insight, thereby generating division and fragmentation.

This is why it’s deeply false to say: “Our Earth system is an emergent process derived from innumerable interlinking subsystems, each of which is driven by different dynamics. As such, it is inherently chaotic, and not subject to deterministic forecasting.” There is no chaos in nature, only in man, on this planet anyway!

Changing worldviews and paradigms is necessary, but no matter how accurate, they will not be sufficient to meeting the crisis of human consciousness.

We take self and time as taken as givens, but there is no self without psychological separation. And becoming, like gradualism and incrementalism, are illusions.

So can enough people feel the urgency of radical change, and give primacy to being over becoming, to ignite a psychological revolution now?

It begins within the individual—literally the undivided human being. Take at least 20 minutes a day to passively observe the inherently separative movement of thought/emotion within oneself in the mirror of nature. Doing so ends division and fragmentation at the root, and that affects the world, however imperceptibly.

No amount of “collective action” will change the course of humankind. A revolution at the core of human consciousness will however.

Each of us brings about psychological revolution in microcosm when we leave the stream of psychological separation, if only for a few minutes a day.

Martin LeFevre

Links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-visit-the-worlds-wonders-with-my-young-son-all-is-ephemeral-even-notre-dame/2019/04/17/4d357e92-60b7-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html

Our Actions Create the Future: A Response to Jem Bendell

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Costa Rican Family Trying to Get Daughter Home After Death in Barcelona

A grieving family is seeking economic help to bring the body of their loved one home.

Stephany Gradys Artola was a special education teacher in Barcelona, Spain. She was also part of the choir of the Sagrada Familia temple. The 27-year-old died this weekend after eating. She died by asphyxia but the cause is still unclear.

Her mother and two sisters traveled to Barcelona after hearing the news. They have the intention of repatriating her body but this costs ¢6.2 million. The option to cremate the body is also costly, ¢3.1 million. They must also cover the three round-trip plane tickets.

Stephany is remembered as a woman of faith who had clear objectives and was dedicated to her dreams. She was happy, optimistic and full of hope.

Contributions can be deposited in the account in colones of the BAC in the name of Andrés Arturo Barquero Torres, identity card 1-1340-0758.

SINPE account: 10200007000184356.

Client Account: 700018435

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Costa Rica’s CCSS & a Hearing Aid Conundrum

The CCSS funded 15,000 prostheses to help those hard of hearing. This sounds good on the surface but the Costa Rican Association of Therapists is against this move. Let’s look into the issue.

The Caja believes that this decision will maintain the quality of appliances and that the attention will improve. It points out that more expensive options are now available at now cost to the patient.

The CTCR believes this will actually negatively affect service to 15,000 patients. This is because the old model of service was that the CCSS funded the hearing aids and the patients were able to choose the one they wanted as well as the private practice to receive care but through the new consolidated public purchase the available devices will come from only 9 of the current 45 companies in the country, limiting the patient’s options.

They also ask how control will be handled for the entire population by only 30 audiologists when the wait list is already 1-3 years long.

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Is the Costa Rican Government Trying to Save Recope for Ulterior Motives

Should the Government save Recope and to what end and at what cost? These are doubts some deputies have. There is an initiative to save it almost at any cost by changing it into an entity that ventures into alternative energies.

The bill in question would change the name of Recope to the Costa Rican Company of Fuels and Alternative Energies, Sociedad Anónima (Ecoena) and dedicate it to the research, development and sale of alternative energies.

It is not well received because it is a way to finance an institution that has already been inefficient for such a long time, a risk to public finances. Additionally, it would be doing a job that the private sector already does well.

An additional problem seen with the idea is that it focuses on hydrogen energy, an energy type not yet proven. Costa Rica should be focused on solar power because of the solar energy to spare.

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Tourist Bus Catches Fire in Costa Rica

A tourist bus caught on fire but none of the 52 passengers were injured. It happened on route 32 in a restaurant parking lot while the group was eating breakfast in the restaurant.

This happened yesterday morning about 150 meters before the crossing to Rio Frio de Sarapiquí. The tour bus was headed to thermal springs in San Carlos.

It is not immediately clear what caused the fire but it is believed to have been an engine failure. The driver heard a detonation similar to a tire exploding and then saw smoke from the engine and a spreading fire.

The bus was completely consumed by flames but they were put out with two fire extinguishers. The bus has been declared a total loss.

During Holy Week, a fire emergency was attended to on average every 9 hours. The population is urged to strengthen preventive actions to avoid further emergencies.

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The Exception that is Costa Rica

In the ongoing U.S. debate about immigration, the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are mainly in the news because many of those crossing our border from Mexico are from these nations. Why isn’t Costa Rica experiencing a similar mass exodus?

I put the question to President Carlos Alvarado Quesada. In an email response he writes in part, “8 percent of our GDP is dedicated to education and our main resource is the human talent and well-being of the people who live in our country. Next Monday, for example, we will celebrate 150 years of primary education for free for all kids in the country.”

Many of those fleeing other Central American countries claim to feel threatened by gangs and crime. Costa Rica has had a lower crime rate than others in the region, but that may be about to change.

According to the Costa Rica Star newspaper, the government and tourism industry started paying more attention to crime when “two female foreign tourists were killed in two days last year, and a third was raped a week later, all near Tortuguero National Park.” The Costa Rican homicide rate has been rising steadily. There were 603 murders in 2017, although figures are lower than in other Central American countries.

Costa Rica is experiencing its own immigration challenge. The New York Times reported last September, “Since mid-April, when Nicaragua erupted in a violent political crisis that has left hundreds dead and crippled the economy, Nicaraguans have been leaving their country en masse — some fleeing a crackdown by President Daniel Ortega against his opponents, others — newly unemployed — desperately looking for work. Many thousands have headed to Costa Rica…”

In fact, writes QCostaRica.com, “Costa Rica has the highest percentage of immigrants in Central America, according to the study Labor Market and Social Policies, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”

Tourism is the main economic driver here. The government is concerned any perception it is unsafe to visit might cause serious financial harm.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 economic freedom rankings place Costa Rica 61st under the category “moderately free,” although President Alvarado references The Economist, which ranks his country “among the strongest 20 democracies in the world.”

Not many people are leaving Costa Rica. It has the lowest emigration rate in Central America and one of the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean. And though the unemployment rate is 9.3 percent and about 20 percent of the population lives in poverty, Costa Ricans stay put.

Part of the reason may be a new anti-poverty program introduced by the previous president, Luis Guillermo Solis. Its goal is to pull at least 54,600 targeted families out of poverty. The plan combines previous welfare benefits that have been, reports the Tico Times, “distributed through 30 separate programs, administered by 20 different agencies.” Families are to be assessed according to their needs and not a-one-size-fits-all formula. Job training and education scholarships are part of the plan so that poverty doesn’t become a life sentence.

President Alvarado, 39, and a center-leftist, has different priorities. The major issue in the last election was same-sex marriage. The former president opposed it, while Mr. Alvarado supports it.

Mr. Alvarado is also a disciple of the climate-change movement. His goal is to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2020.

How a small country like Costa Rica — or even a larger one like the United States — can affect the globe’s naturally changing temperatures — especially when major polluters like China, India and, yes, the United States aren’t doing much to reduce carbon emissions — is never addressed.

Crime control and maintaining a vibrant tourist industry seem to be better and more attainable goals than changing the climate and promoting same-sex marriage.

By Cal Thomas – Washington Post columnist

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The Human Soul and Poetry

As you read this article, please enjoy: ‘Magic Fantasy – A Witch’s Tale’ music for your reading pleasure.

‘Matter is energy, Energy is Light, We are all light beings.’ Albert Einstein.

The existence of the human soul is an ancient idea that has followed us into modern times. Our ancestors were convinced that we each have a soul and that it can be good or evil.

We can take a look at different mythologies around the world and compare them to our modern views on our souls. We each seem to agree that a human being is capable of housing a soul yet we still do not know how to harness it’s powers.

A soul is believed to be consisted of energy that transforms forever so that it is capable of surviving an eternity on many different astral planes.

In ancient Egypt we come across something like a soul that is referred to as a Ba. The Egyptian Book of the Dead states that this Ba rises up out of the body upon death in the shape of a falcon with a human head.

Our breathe is considered by some mystics to be the actual breathe of  the soul. Pranayama is what you call the breathe in eastern meditation practices. It actually means extension of the life force. Our soul is our essence.

Buddhist also believe in reincarnations. Reincarnation is about the soul of a person being reborn to another body. When you are reincarnated you are able to regain your consciousness from your previous life with memory even though you are not in the same body.

It is believed that the spiritual world can recognize our soul. We have auras. An aura is an essence all around you that seems to resonate several different colors each meaning to symbolize the soul inside of the body. Only certain people can see these auras and understand what they mean. Only recently has this idea become very popular. Indefinitely we cannot determine the exact moment of thought of the aura but we can assume that it is a fairly new notion. The Chakras have been around since the early ancient times and they are signified with colors.

With the invention of Kirlian photography we can clearly prove that  aura’s exist.

New Age concepts use the crystal skull. The crystal skull is made to  absorb the essences of life matter. They can retain human spirits and  energy of all kinds. It is shaped like a skull because the ancient  peoples believe that this is the source of all knowledge – that which is inside of the human skull.

We could argue than of where the soul is related. Many theorists  speculate that the soul could be housed within your heart or mind. Most people agree that a soul is a small size that hides easily in the body. 

Yet how does a soul transplant itself from a dead person to a living and why does it cease to dwell in a body that is no longer living?

The theory of the vampire is that he is immortal. He is a soulless  demonic thing. Could the soul of somebody be trapped inside of an  immortal creature? After all the gods themselves each have souls. 

Even if you believe in just one God, he has a soul that is contained, an essence, a spirit. Some cultures believe that gods and goddesses incarnate into human flesh never really changing who they are.

The devil in mythology goes around harvesting souls. In the Christian  bible, it reads that if you really want to find God that you must seek him with all of your heart and soul (Deuteronomy 4:29). This  acknowledges that we do have souls and many people have thought since  ancient times of this.

Wherever it may be hiding we may never know until our destroyer comes to take it from us. Countless legends describe it differently yet the soul is the only piece of us that seems to matter in the whole greatness of the universe. We are capable of unleashing the gifts deep rooted in our soul- broken audio memories of the past through dreams, visions, fantasies and meditation. All these things are the parts of your soul that is channeling throughout your whole body.

Possesions Shooting stars fly by, My soul burns beneath moonlight,

… I want to hide away with feathers to cover my face. In your bed, pillows out of place,

OVERWHELMED, because I do it to myself.

Yet, we are only God’s POSSESSIONS, Love spell master, a disaster ,

Angels fall in love to quick.

______________________________________

Spiders~

My design is like love,

mixed with faith,

We are all spiders,

spinning webs.~

_____________________________________

Temple~

I am a temple made for a holy spirit,

A vase filled with many dreams,

They pour out like water,

To form the mist upon my wings.

_____________________________________

Lost~

Murky waters salty air Shipwreck visions Mermaid wind song heard like premonitions

Black waves salty air Ocean like a galaxy Siren lead my soul astray lost caves

Dreams at midnight all gone today a thief has stole them lanterns blaze

Memories bitter salty air hidden souls like ships cross over there, lost, lost everywhere

By: Deanna Jaxine Stinson, Paranormal Researcher Halo Paranormal Investigations – HPI International https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/HPIinternational/

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A Creative Explosion of Insight

“Evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.”

“Culture change happens when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.”

“To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough.”

______

Which one of these three statements rings entirely false, which rings half true, and which rings true to you? In a dead culture, each parent and teacher has to first be their own parent and teacher, before they can teach children how to hear the truth beyond the cacophony of lies.

The first statement is a risible lie from Attorney General William Barr today, about a man that has displayed nothing but corrupt intent since assuming the presidency. Barr sealed his fate; he will be known through the annals of history as Trump’s toady. And the American people don’t care.

The second quote is a bromide by a leading MSM commentator that manages to both hit the mark and miss it at the same time. Culture change in America, or in any nation that has lost its soul, begins with a few acknowledging and mourning the loss, and then moving in a new direction. No one need copy anyone however.

The third is a few lines from Rilke, one of the West’s greatest contemplative poets. Like all good poets, you can’t be quite sure what he means. That of course is the point of poetry. For true poetry is inscribed not merely on the page when the lines were written, but on the heart by every discerning reader.

The human crisis is much deeper and wider than America now, and involves things for which we have no words, or too many of them. What language do we speak when all languages fall short, except the unspoken language of the heart? And how does one, how does anyone convey truths that are at once perishable and unconquerable?

An unconscious cognitive revolution occurred in East Africa about 100,000 years ago that made us “fully modern humans.” A conscious creative explosion of insight, effectively ‘rewiring’ the human brain, is now possible, indeed essential for our survival. Can it actually occur at this juncture?

Every human on earth, all nearly 8 billion of us, descended from a few thousand people who made the cognitive leap. Physically, people looked the same as they did before, but after the cognitive revolution, humans were capable of complex technology, diverse cultures, sophisticated speech, and great art.

If we were able to go back in time, and transport a baby from a few hundred years before the cognitive revolution to the present, the child would grow into what we call a mentally impaired adult. But if we were able to transport a baby from after the cognitive revolution, that child would grow into what we call a normal adult.

Of course normal now is abnormal just 50 years ago, when self-centeredness was not considered a virtue, and self-interest was not deemed an immutable characteristic of individuals as well as nations.

The cognitive revolution has run its course. Sure, science, medicine and computer technology will continue to expand, but the human being has become secondary, if not irrelevant to what we so blithely call progress.

There are many theories as to what has gone wrong with human civilization, and almost as many solutions for how to correct it. Most attempt to give “a dose of optimism during tough times;” all say, “we must “adapt our brains to a better process of problem-solving.”

Superficial ideas emanate from books like “The Watchman’s Rattle,” ideas like “supermemes,” defined as “any belief, thought, or behavior that becomes so pervasive, so stubbornly embedded, that it contaminates or suppresses all other beliefs or behaviors.” The notion is that supermemes “become so dominant that a society stops its search for answers and relies on beliefs instead of knowledge or facts.”

The “search for answers” and “the problem-solving brain” cannot resolve the crisis of consciousness. That attitude itself is a prime impediment, not the thing that needs to be enhanced.

Is it a matter of “how accelerating complexity outpaces the rate the human brain can develop new capabilities?”

Clearly we don’t need more cognition; we need to ignite our brain’s capacity for insight. Then a creative explosion of insight will bring about a new human being and a global culture and civilization.

Cognition is thought, and thought is cognition. Insight can and does inform thought and knowledge, but insight does not have its source, or for that matter its import for humanity, in thought and knowledge.

A creative explosion of insight will change the brain itself. Such an inner revolution begins within the individual, will be ignited by a few, and then taken up (not copied) by the many.

Martin LeFevre

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Corruption in School Construction in Costa Rica

The Minister of Education, Edgar Mora, stated that he suspects corruption schemes related to school construction. He has found irregularities in the office that plans and maintains the construction of schools in Costa Rica.

The problems were apparent since almost a decade ago. They have been referred to as a management crisis that has become chronic. Moreover, they are aggravated by means to disguise corruption schemes.

Some of the problems include delivering materials before having a project to do at the school, using materials designated for sanitary projects to instead create a new building, and overvaluation of projects.

Mora seeks to change the model of leadership in the Directorate of Infrastructure and Educational Equipment (DIEE) in order to correct the problems. He wants to centralize who is in charge so there are not so many people (5,000) involved in making decisions about administrative contracting.

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Improvements to Costa Rica’s Manuel Antonio National Park

There have been positive changes in Manuel Antonio recently allowing for an increase in the daily limit of visitors to the national park. It is already the most visited national park in the country.

That being said, many complaints were made by tourists and the community about deficiencies in services. There was a sanitary restriction that has now been lifted thanks to improvements in sanitary conditions.

Starting this month, 2,700 people can enter per day instead of the 1,700 when the restriction was in place. The Ministry of Environment and Energy was behind the improvements in the wastewater treatment system at beach 3. Additional portable toilets were also added.

The National System of Conservation Areas, the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, as well as community institutions and private companies are to thank for their involvement in bettering the park.

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New Costa Rica Shipping Port Barely Staying Afloat

Japdeva is analyzing the possibility of expanding the Moín dock as a means to bring in more business since it is in full financial crisis. The original master plan stated that the berth should have been in operation since 2015 but it still has yet to be tendered.

The construction of the seventh berth would cost over ¢17,500 million but would bring in new business capable of keeping afloat the finances of the Port Administration and Economic Development Board of the Atlantic Coast.

The post is called 5-7 and it would open a space for ships with a draft of up to 14 meters, a size not able to dock at the current berths due to lack of depth. It would be built with external financing.

Another of Japdeva’s ideas is to become a transshipment center where merchandise is transferred from large vessels that arrive with bulk shipments to smaller vessels directed to specific markets.

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Manitoba Premier gets Proof of Payment on Taxes Owed on Costa Rica Home

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has produced evidence that he has, after a year of controversy on the subject, paid a luxury tax he owed on his vacation home in Costa Rica.

Pallister showed the Canadian Press a document from a treasury department worker in the Costa Rica province of Guanacaste, where his vacation home is located and owned under a corporation called Finca Deneter Doce Sociedad Anonima.

“Guanacaste’s tax administration states that the company Finca Deneter Doce Sociedad Anonima is up to date in the payment of the solidarity tax 2019,” reads the one-page document, signed by a revenue technician and stamped with a seal of the treasury department. The document, dated Jan. 30, is in Spanish and was translated by the Canadian Press.

“However, the foregoing does not imply waiver of the collection of tax obligations whose existence is later detected.”

Pallister said last August he paid roughly $8,000 in back taxes and penalties. The document he revealed does not contain any dollar figures.

The document may put an end to one chapter in the controversy that has dogged the premier about his vacation property and how much time he spends there.

Pallister and his wife purchased the hillside property in 2008. The main bungalow measures 3,400 square feet, according to design plans, and has what Pallister calls a “small finished area” in the basement with a piano and TV room.

There is also a pool, a groundskeeper’s quarter and a gym.

A year after Pallister purchased the property, Costa Rica brought in a national tax on homes with a construction value of 100 million colones – about $230,000. The tax is in addition to local taxes, which Pallister says he has always paid, and its threshold rises each year roughly in line with inflation.

The luxury tax is complex. It is not based on market value or estimates filed for construction permits, but instead on the type of building material used in each room, the area covered by each material and other factors.

The tax also relies somewhat on the honour system. Residents are, for the most part, left to file their own property assessments.

Last year, Pallister said he had never been billed for the luxury tax and had been advised that his home did not meet the threshold to pay it. The Costa Rica government maintains an online list of luxury tax debtors, but has not listed Pallister or his holding company.

Pallister promised to look into whether he owed the tax after questions in the legislature and from the media. In August, he admitted he had failed to have his property reassessed every three years as required by Costa Rica law and was being penalized for back taxes.

Since then, Pallister said, his lawyer in Costa Rica has been working on filing an updated assessment and paperwork to pay the luxury tax. A strike by Costa Rica government workers in the fall slowed things down.

“The lawyer began the process and then they went into a public-service general strike, so there’s the reason for the delay,” Pallister said.

Pallister has also faced criticism over the amount of time spent at his vacation property and for saying, on at least one occasion, that he was not there when he was.

In 2016, months after taking office, Pallister said he planned to spend six to eight weeks a year in Costa Rica. He later revised that to five weeks. He has gone twice since mid-December.

From The Canadian Press 

[sjohnson24]

Costa Rican Cyclist Dies During Race

Fans and loved ones of Costa Rican cyclist Mariano Saborío are saddened by the tragic news that he died due to a heart problem. The heart trouble started while he was competing in a mountain biking event in the Canary Islands, Panama.

The man was only 31-years-old. He was from Atenas and had four years of cycling practice under his belt. He finished second in the first stage of his last mountain bike event.

While in the last part of the three-stage competition, on Monday, he vanished, it seemed. It turns out he suddenly felt bad and fainted and was transferred to a medical center. There he died at dawn.

His legacy is remembered by his team Ciclistas de Atenas. With them he trained mountain and route biking. He participated in the Copa Endurance, Trans Costa Rica, and Ruta de los Conquistadores.

[sjohnson24]

The Earth Is Our Cathedral, and We’re Destroying It

Even for those who never saw Notre Dame Cathedral, even for those who have no use for organized religion, the fire engulfing one of humankind’s oldest and greatest architectural structures was a sad sight.

Some perspective is necessary however. It was man-made thing, and though great art has been lost, no lives were lost. What spiritual and global meanings can we draw from the loss of Notre Dame Cathedral?

“This building took 100 years to construct and was undone in less than a day. We long for some reason, some justification, something to help us mourn the loss of a bit of beauty in the world,” a scholar on medieval religion and violence said.

It took billions of years for present lifeforms on earth to evolve, and they are being decimated in a matter of decades through man’s greed, stupidity and inertia.

People here are still reeling from the wildfire that incinerated the nearby mountain town called Paradise, and killed nearly 90 people. The over-the-top coverage of Notre Dame’s fire on cable TV looks like another sign that elites are refusing to read.

Such intricate symbols of man-made grandeur were monuments the Catholic Church built to itself as much as they were intended to give illiterate people an experience of the divine. What is their loss if we continue to desecrate the earth and decimate the creatures that evolved along with us?

“The French,” an American columnist living in Paris wrote, “don’t spend much time in churches,” adding, with unintended irony, “residents might not have fully realized it until Monday, but I think it reassured them to know that at the heart of their highly planned city was someplace entirely non-rational and non-Cartesian.”

Why does the human heart revere most what the human mind and hand have wrought? Why do most people’s hearts soar within a cathedral but remain coffined when mountainous masses of cumulus slide across an azure sky?

“Notre Dame is our history, our literature, our imagination,” President Emmanuel Macron said. “The place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”

Humanity needs new epicenters, places not of symbol and stone, but cathedrals of nature where the heart and spirit can find healing and renewal. Perhaps that’s one metaphysical meaning serious people can draw from this cultural and architectural misfortune.

An author wrote after a fire in 1174 that destroyed the Canterbury Cathedral that this “house of God hitherto delightful as a paradise of pleasures, was now made a despicable heap of ashes, reduced to a dreary wilderness.”

Dreary wilderness? I’m reminded of John Muir lamenting the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley by the City of San Francisco for water and power. It broke his heart. Imagine damming Yosemite Valley for water and power. That’s what they did at Hetch Hetchy.

Muir wrote: “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

“Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

As a young man I hiked into Hetch Hetchy one spring with a friend, cross-country skis strapped to our backpacks since snow still covered the slopes above what was once a majestic valley.

I’m glad Muir didn’t live to see truncated waterfalls fall into a man-made lake, or a dirty bathtub ring of the high water mark on the foreshortened granitic rockfaces.

Not having seen Notre Dame, I didn’t understand why they built the great cathedrals during medieval times, symbols of such magnificence amidst so much squalor, until my Russian cultural hosts took me to St. Isaac’s, the largest cathedral in Russia. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, and the Russians knew that the USSR was about to collapse.

We were talking as we walked into the cavernous space, empty even of pews, and decorated with gold and jewels in the high Russian style. I was struck silent, and asked my hosts to be quiet as I walked alone and stood under the huge dome.

I had an intimation of the same feeling you get in the High Sierras with the “Range of Light” stretched out before you. At best, a few people of religious power and wealth designed the great cathedrals to recreate for the many the feeling of immensity, awe and sublimity.

They’ll rebuild Notre Dame; don’t grieve for it. Mourn what man is doing to the earth, and move beyond sorrow to save what is left.

As John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”

Martin LeFevre