The best of both worlds

Sorry for the lax posting of late. Work has been busy, but we've been lucky to have lots of visitors, so I really can't complain! I'll try to get a Semana Santa summary up soon. But first, a little blurb about this weekend while it's fresh in my mind:

The Los Suenos Marriott in Herradura, on the Pacific Coast, lives up to its "dreamy" name. It's by far one of the nicest hotels I've stayed in, and one of the top luxury spots in Costa Rica. Thanks to generosity and connections from my friend Chris who's visiting us this week, we were able to stay there this weekend. And, I'm not going to lie, it was nice.

The pool is a giant maze, the beds are huge and comfy, and there's a swim up bar. The service is great; my only only quibble would be the quality of the food at the hotel, considering the price(We walked over to the Marina area, however, and had two great meals). I wanted to jet down to Jaco Saturday to take some surf lessons, but, sadly, it was too tough to leave the pool.

Which gets me to my next point: it was amazing having two days off at a luxurious resort, but I worry that many of the people staying there don't go see the real Costa Rica. Yes, it's great chilling at the resort, playing golf, perusing the marina and nearby gift shops--but you can do that in Mexico and Hawaii.


Just a quick drive up from Herradura, however, is the Carara National Park. Unassuming, the park is not one of Costa Rica's big names and is easy to miss driving past on the highway. But, paying close atttention, you can spot the macaws soaring over your head on the freeway and get a little glimpse of what lies ahead.

I thought nothing would beat the macaws I saw at Osa. But seeing flocks of them flying over from a nearby lagoon, with giant lizards and crocodiles also within view, is tough to beat. And Carara is easy access--we hadn't planned on going there, so we only wore flip flops and didn't hire a guide. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can handle it in your beach wear (while getting odd looks from the head-to-toe-in-REI-gear "aventure vacationers"), and if you're lucky, see what we saw, all in only a couple hours.


Then, feel better heading back to luxuries of Los Suenos having "roughed it" a little bit. Our friends, however, are heading to Monteverde, which I'll blog about soon.

Semana Santa Claus may not come to town

Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is huge in Costa Rica. From what I understand, the country completely shuts down, and everyone heads to the beach. As such, it's a critical week for the country's tourism industry, which is having a tough year with the economic slowdown. As I wrote earlier this week for The Tico Times, Semana Santa may be a disappointment for many tourism outlets this season (sorry for the brutal pun in the headline, but I couldn't resist):

For many tourism outlets throughout the country, Semana Santa, or Easter
Week, is traditionally a final shot at full hotel rooms and busy restaurants,
before the heavy rains of the green season wash away the crowds.

This year, however, the economic slump has hit the tourism industry
hard. With an eye on their wallets, many travelers have elected to stay home in
order to save a couple bucks, and Easter Week is shaping up to be no
exception.

According to the National Tourism Chamber (CANATUR), 71.2 percent of
tourism-related businesses report that reservations are down compared to last
year's Semana Santa.

The chamber, which surveyed 52 tourism outlets, said that 19.2 percent
of businesses reported similar numbers as last year, while 3.8 have seen
reservations rise.

Those that reported a decrease saw reservations decline by an average
of 38.1 percent compared with last year. Hardest hit were tour guides, car
rental agencies and hotels, the chamber said.

Sue Kalmbach, owner of La Paloma Lodge in Drake Bay, on the Southern
Zone's Osa Peninsula, says reservations are down 50 percent compared to last
year's Easter Week. More and more tourists are waiting later to make
reservations, however, so she hopes that things will pick up over the next
week.

“We are exceptionally slow this year,” Kalmbach said. “I think people
are waiting, and I hope that, little by little, they keep coming.”

Going going, back back to Manuel Antonio

One of the best things about being here for a few months is the ability to return to places I've already been in order to catch something I may have missed the first time. In the case of Manuel Antonio, that something was only the main reason most people go there: Manuel Antonio National Park, the 2nd most visited national park in the whole country, and the home of some of Costa Rica's most beautiful beaches.

Those beaches, however, just lost their Blue Flag status, which is nationwide recognition for eco-friendliness, because of the risk of sewage contamination (for more, see my article in The Tico Times earlier this week here).

You see, my weekend at the beach wasn't all fun in the sun (although there was plenty of that). I had four stories to write--a hotel review, feature on a local gift shop that opened a bar & grill, and a piece on a new clinic to rehab injured jungle animals, and, last but not least, a report on the sanitary issues at the national park. That may sound like a lot to handle in two and a half days, but things surprisingly worked out well.

I knew we were set for a good weekend when Avalon and I got out of the house late on Friday, had the slowest taxi driver known to man, and showed up 5 minutes late for our noon bus to Manuel Antonio. Running to the bus station from the curb (Avalon, you may be surprised to hear, is actually quite fast when need be) we managed to get on just in time. Sometimes, Tico Time (or the fact that most things here run late) is just what you need.

Yesterday, the country's health minister visited Manuel Antonio to check on the progress the park had made in cleaning up its act. There was a reasonable chance she would order the park closed--meaning I would have been there the last weekend possible--because of the sewage leaks from the bathrooms, a problem that is endemic to the entire park system and has existed for years.

Luckily, she agreed to give the park a few more months to come up with a long-term solution Hopefully, the specter of a closed-down Manuel Antonio will scare the environmental industry, as well as local businesses, into action. Closing the park would have been a huge blow to the local economy, but the country can't afford to neglect its environmental gems anymore.


And, on that somber note, I'll leave you with some more pictures of the beach and the park. Including monkeys, which lost a little bit of their luster when I realized how tame they had become in order to try to steal food from people. When some French tourists started feeding them, ignoring the orders of the park ranger, I had to get out of there.

Unfortunately, this sign was ignored:

Rocking times over, tourism slump has Costa Rica singing the blues

You won't believe me, but the music metaphor wasn't my idea but my editor's. But anyways, here's my story (as promised) about how the economic slowdown is taking its toll on the tourism industry in Costa Rica. I've posted the first few paragraphs, click on the link for the whole story:

On a Saturday night in Puerto Viejo in late January, Rocking J's is packed. The hostel, a popular destination for backpackers and budget travelers on the Caribbean, teems with twenty-somethings shouting and laughing, kicking back with a beer after a long day of surfing and tanning on the beach.

Unfortunately, nights like this are increasingly rare in Costa Rica these days. In interviews with nearly a dozen hotel owners, tour operators and tourism officials, almost all expressed the same concern: The global economic downturn is beginning to take its toll on tourism in Costa Rica. And many are worried, unsure when the crisis is going to end and just what can be done to weather the storm.

“We were dead in the water,” Rocking J's owner Joseph John Korchmaros said of the slowdown that hit his hostel beginning in October, considered to be the high season in the Caribbean. “We could barely stay afloat. We didn't have a high season.”

For the tourism industry in much of the country, the high season is just beginning. But according to a poll of 66 businesses conducted by the National Tourism Chamber (CANATUR) last month, more than 60 percent of respondents said reservations for the first quarter of 2009 were down compared to 2008. Those that reported a slowdown said reservations had declined an average of 29 percent. And the number of passengers at Juan Santamaría International Airport was down 8.25 percent for the first 15 days of the month, CANATUR reported.

“Definitely, there is a slowdown,” said Alexi Huntley, commercial director at Nature Air. “We've seen about a 10 percent reduction in passengers flown. People are really shopping around; they are more price-sensitive and are comparing different providers. People are holding on to their money more, and that hurts everybody. Everyone's a little freaked out.”