A giant Parade of the Surfing Nations began the opening ceremonies of the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games at Jaco Beach this morning. In full “Olympic” style, over 34 nations in bright uniforms and flags flying, followed a colorful Costa Rican marching band down the main street of town, to the exited cheers of thousands posted along the parade route.

The parade finished in the Park of Jaco. There, ISA President, Fernando Aguerre, along with the Chief of the Costa Rican Tourism Department, Carlos Ricardo Benavidez, the Mayor of Garabito, Marvin Eliondo, the Manager of the ICE Group, Pedro Pablo Quiroz and the President of the Surfing Federation of Costa Rica, Jose Ureña, spoke in front of an enormous crowd of competitors and public. Billabong´s Marketing Vice-President Graham Stapelberg joined them. more…

When you choose the Calypso Cruises for your trip to Tortuga Island, not only do you get an informative narrative of the passage during the voyage, you also get a great lunch.

While you are enjoying the beach or hiking around the island, the Calypso staff is busy making your lunch from scratch.

All of the food is prepared on the island except salads and not one piece of garbage remains when you leave. We really like that part of the excursion. more…

When we arrived at this island, we were not prepared for the Gilligan’s Island feel. This truly is a isolated island in the middle of the Gulf of Nicoya.

The beach here is beautiful and the water is clear all of the time which helps if you want to snorkel.

They rent snorkeling equipment on the beach to visitors. more…

Here is a virtual tour of the beach landing on Tortuga Island. The previous virtual tour was taken on the beach, this tour is from the perspective of the boat deck. Again, please be patient with the loading of the tours as I am still trying to find out the best way to tweak the code of this Wordpress theme to show the QTVR movies the best way for all concerned. Yeah I know there is a small overlap of the stitched images that warps the tour in one spot. I took these virtual tours while I was how should we say? Feeling pura vida…
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Tonight we have Alpha Blondy playing live at Doce Lunas here in Jaco, Costa Rica. Many fans who love Bob Marley feel Alpha Blondy is the closest living performer who provides excellent music, vocals, and his message via lyrics is genuine. How Doce Lunas lined up such a top performer remains a secret but this hidden hotel located in Quebrada Seco is by far responsible for most cultural and musical events of any significance.

Alpha Blondy is scheduled to play tonight and tomorrow night at Doce Lunas. For posterity and google, the Alpha Blondy concert dates are May 2 and May 3, 2009 in Jaco Costa Rica at Doce Lunas

Tomorrow night here in Jaco Ray Ruiz will be playing at a local Cuban nightclub called Congas. This new live music scene is in the old Fusion nightclub. All of us here in Jaco cannot help ourselves when people ask for directions. Take a left where Fusion used to be…. When will Jaco or any of us start to say, “When you get to Congas turn left” “Uh, okay but where is Congas?” “Where Fusion used to be” “Cool; now I got it…” It seems nobody who has moved into that place cannot wipeout the forsaken nightclub name from local memory. Anyhow, I have no idea who this Ray Ruiz singer is but he is supposed to be very good. Sorry I am negative in the Cultural IQ tonight. If you try to say Ray Ruiz with the proper Spanish accent, make sure Spanish was your first tongue so you do not embarrass the expats here in Jaco, it is a real twister hearing the Cubans say it. more…