The Tico Times

The Municipality of Santa Cruz is moving to impose order on one of Costa Rica’s fastest-growing property markets, preparing a coastal and urban zoning plan that will, for the first time, set out a formal legal framework for development across the canton’s booming shoreline districts. Municipal officials expect the plan to be completed during the first quarter of 2027.

Some Costa Rican merchants are quietly weighing a return to cash. The reason is a plan by the Ministry of Hacienda to scrutinize the mobile-payment numbers that businesses use most heavily, part of a broader push to catch commercial income that never reaches a tax return. For a country that has embraced digital payments faster than almost anywhere in Latin America, the announcement has unsettled shop owners who fear that a tool they rely on daily could now draw the attention of the tax authority.

The historic building that houses the University of Costa Rica’s School of Musical Arts could lose its operating permit after health inspectors found infrastructure and sanitation problems, including openings that allow raccoons to enter the facility. The Ministry of Health gave the university until Monday, July 20, to comply with a sanitary order issued after an inspection in April.

Costa Rica passed a law letting Recope develop biofuels and green hydrogen. Here's what changes and what won't.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has been in power for nearly two decades, ruled out on Sunday any possibility of future elections in the country, saying they could allow the exiled opposition to one day take control of the government. “They should forget about it.

By early afternoon on Sunday, the concert grounds at Parque Metropolitano La Sabana had turned into an open-air stadium of their own. Families, groups of friends and visitors filled the space in front of a giant screen, faces painted, red Spanish shirts mixing with the sky blue and white of Argentina, waiting for a match that would crown a new world champion.

If you’re planning your week around the weather, it’s going to be windy and humid today but the real rain shows up Tuesday, and it hits hardest on the Caribbean and the Northern Zone. If your plans are on the Pacific side, your lucky since it will be drier. Today you’ll feel the wind before you see the rain. Gusts are running 60 to 90 km/h (37 to 56 mph) across the mountains and 40 to 65 km/h (25 to 40 mph) in the lowlands, so expect it to be breezy pretty much everywhere.

El Lugar Costa Rica in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí has earned a 2026 Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice Award, placing it in the global top 10%.

A strong El Niño has taken hold over Costa Rica and will keep much of the country drier and hotter than normal through the rest of 2026, according to the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN), which expects the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation to persist into early 2027.

With my car doing what it does best– sitting idly in the carport awaiting a part– I walked twenty minutes in the dark down the long incline of the main street of the barrio to line up for the 5 am bus to Quepos. A red taxi pulled up. The driver stepped out and said, “Quepos! Dominical!” The going rate from Perez Zeledon to Quepos is 25 to 30 thousand colones. Not worth it as after 35 years here, I live happily on Tico time. Then he quoted his price. Mil to Dominical, mil quinientos to Quepos.