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San
José, Costa Rica, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 216
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 University of Florida/Ashley
Sharpe
Aguateca was burned after a
surprise enemy attack. Animal bones
shed light on Maya masses
By the University of Florida news staff
Most of what archaeologists know about Mayan civilization relates to kings, queens and their elaborate temples. To understand what life was like for the 99 percent, one researcher turned to ancient animal bones stored at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Ashley Sharpe, a doctoral student at the museum on the University of Florida campus, says the picture researchers have painted of the Maya people isn’t broad enough: “When you think about the Romans and the Greeks, we know a lot about all of the different social classes from the Caesars down to the commoners, but although there were tens of thousands of middle-class and lower-income Maya in big cities, we still don’t know much about the everyday lives of most people.” For the first time in Maya archaeology research, 22,000 animal remains at the museum, one of the largest collections of its kind outside of Central America, were used as clues about life in the Maya lower classes. The bones revealed that the civilization known for its art and astronomy also had political and economic systems that were more complex than previously thought, systems similar to modern societies. The details are described in a new study appearing online this month in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. “We looked at how the Maya acquired and distributed animal resources in order to learn more about the economy and how the royal, elite and lower classes interacted,” said Ms. Sharpe, who has either lived in or made frequent trips to the Maya region since 2008. “It turns out, the Maya states and classes were not all homogenous. They had complicated systems in place for trade relations, distribution of food and access to species, which varied among the cities and social classes much like they do today.” Ms. Sharpe and co-author Kitty Emery, Florida Museum associate curator of environmental archaeology, examined the animal remains recovered from the ruins of three Maya city-states in Guatemala, including the famous site of Aguateca that was burned after a surprise enemy attack which resulted in a level of preservation similar to the Roman ruins of Pompeii. Ms. Sharpe traced the movement of animals and their resources from trade partners to Aguateca and the capitals of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. She also followed the flow of resources between royalty, the rich and the poor at the capital cities and to the less powerful surrounding villages. “The Maya used animals for things like hides, tools, jewelry and musical instruments, but they were also vitally important as emblems of status, royalty and the symbolic world of the gods, and thus often were prime resources jealously guarded by the rich and powerful,” Ms. Emery said. Surprisingly, however, study researchers found that middle-ranking elites used the widest variety of animals. Royalty and other high-ranking elites focused on a select group of symbolic and prestigious animals like jaguars and crocodiles, Ms. Sharpe said. “We had expected that the elites would have the highest diversity but that was not the case,” she said. “The elites ate animals that were considered delicacies, sort of the way people in our own upper class eat things like caviar, but the rest of us think it’s kind of gross.” Ms. Sharpe said poor villagers mostly ate fish and shellfish from rivers near their homes. However, both the poor and middle-elite classes living at the capitals kept a wider variety of animals for themselves than they shared with the surrounding villages, particularly more species from deep inside forests and from the ocean, which was 50 to 100 miles away. At Aguateca, more than 100 miles from the nearest coast, thousands of marine shells were found covering the floors of ancient households and craft workshops. “These people didn’t have pack animals like in the Old World where they had horses and donkeys to carry goods,” Ms. Sharpe said. “They were literally carrying things on their backs from the sea. They did have rivers to help with transportation, but not a lot of rivers, and on land they also had the jungle to contend with.” At Yaxchilan, more than half of the skeletons found were deer, suggesting residents primarily relied on nearby forests, including the deer that fed on their corn fields. However, much like in medieval Britain, there is evidence the Maya may have regulated hunting and fishing, creating more of a divide in access to animal resources among the classes, Ms. Sharpe said. The differences in predominate species, such as marine animals and deer, show the city-states likely had different trade partners, which Ms. Sharpe said makes sense because there were, at times, hostilities between the cities. The differences could also point to unique cultural identities, she said. For example, the residents of Aguateca were known for their jewelry made from shells. “This is the first time we’re seeing this sort of evidence for what the middle and lower classes were doing,” Ms. Sharpe said. Archaeologists have been working amid dense jungle to understand how the many Maya city-states functioned since the early 20th century. They have raised questions about how states cooperated, or didn’t, with one another, how much control and interaction state capitals had with their subordinate villages, and how the various social classes differed, Sharpe said. The pair decided to analyze animal bones to begin answering these questions because animal resources played such a vital role in the politics and economy of the Late Classic Maya civilization (A.D. 500-900), Ms. Emery said. But buried beneath the jungle floor in Guatemala are enough mysteries to fill Ms. Sharpe’s entire career. “It almost doesn’t matter where you dig in the jungle near these centers, you hit paved limestone floor. It gives you the sense that at one time, the entire place was deforested and it was a massive city,” she said. “When you travel to these capitals, you drive over unexcavated mounds that were once people’s houses, people we know little or nothing about.” Volcano continues to be a big puzzle By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Volcanologists say that the Volcán Turrialba is entering its third active phase and that the more recent displays are being augmented by heavy rains that are falling on the mountain. An increase in activity in October has brought heightened official notice. The Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias said that emergency plans are being reviewed. Monitoring stations can hear fluid moving around in the mountains, but no one has suggested that a major eruption is near. The internal activity has been on the rise since July, said a report from the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica. There was a small eruption about 6 a.m. Friday. Volcanologists reported that the eruption lifted smoke and ash 300 meters into the sky. There have been a flurry of small eruptions all last week. The first eruptive cycle was from October to December 2014, said the Observatorio. The second was between March and July his year. The current activity is being aided by the infiltration of rain water, the report said. The Observatorio said that sonic monitoring suggests that a small body of magma is making its way to the top of the volcano, and as it depressurizes it emits more gas and vapor. Those most at risk are farmers who raise crops and animals of the skirts of the volcano, but they have had a lot of experience dealing with the mountain. The national park that surrounds the mountain has been closed for years. Police had erected checkpoints at entries to the area around the mountain. A lot of residents already have left. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this Web site are
copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado S.A 2015 and may not be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 216 | |
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| Canadian couple seeks allies to challenge steep maritime
zone fees |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A couple who are part-time residents are seeking to rally support for a legal assault on excessive fees for those who have dwellings in the maritime zone. The couple, Yukon residents Greg Allen and Lynn MacDiarmid, are seeking responses from other foreign residents who are similarly afflicted. The couple's canon or annual maritime fee in Playa Matapalo has jumped from $700 in 2010 to about $4,000 now. Many more persons who live on maritime concessions have the same problem. The fee reflected the large jump in the estimated value of the land brought about because payments by large hotels have distorted the calculations. "We would be interested to know if there are others in the Maritime Zone who would like to get together on this issue |
and maybe
pitch in to
hire someone, the couple said in an email. A constitutional court appeal has failed as have appeals to the local Municipalidad de Aguirre, which collects the fee based on national law. So in addition to hiring another lawyer to press the case, the couple also are seeking ideas on how to proceed. They can be reached through A.M. Costa Rica. "Just to be very direct, we want to take action with a lawyer and want to know who wants to join us," they said. "We were looking for ideas for a good lawyer and to find out how many people are interested. We can then see how much it would cost and what we would each have to contribute depending on the numbers." A prior news story is HERE! |
 Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas photo
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Water boys A handful of agencies worked together over the weekend to provide some 2,400 liters of drinking water to an estimated 300 residents of Isla Caballo in the Gulf of Nicoya. The wells on the island are suffering from the El Niño drought. Emergency commission officials said they will be setting up a place on the Puntarenas docks where residents can draw water at no charge. |
| Vampire bats have a way to keep their victims unaware of
their bites |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Movie vampires usually wait until the heroine is asleep before seeking her exposed neck. Not so vampire bats that inhabit Costa Rica and much of the Americas. The little winged animals usually feed on the lower extremities of cattle and other creatures while the blood sources are awake. So the question is why do the larger blood donors fail to react to the bat's sharp teeth. A team from Texas Tech University reports that bat saliva contains substances that numb the bite site or prevent blood clotting. Bats share these chemical traits with another blood-sucker, the leech, they said. The result of the evening feast by bats is far more significant than a small amount of cow blood. In Costa Rica, the bats have been linked to the spread of rabies in cows and the possibility that humans could be infected, too. Vampire bats, which are native to the Americas, evolved over the last five million years when insect-eating ancestral bats developed a complex combination of physical and |
 Texas
Tech University photo
The tiny creatures have very
sharp teeth.physiological traits that enabled blood-eating, said the Texas Tech report. “We identified at least three genes that would be beneficial for blood-eating by producing molecules that interfere with host nervous response and blood coagulation,” said Caleb D. Phillips, an assistant professor and curator of genetic resources. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not
be
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 216 | |||||
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| Teff, the Ethiopian staple grain, is making inroads in the
West |
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By the
A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Wayne Carlson became a convert to Ethiopia's staple grain while doing public health work in Africa in the mid-1970s. Teff flour is the key ingredient for injera, Ethiopia's signature, spongy flatbread. It has a mild, nutty or earthy taste. In the late 1970s, Carlson returned to the U.S., married and settled in southwest Idaho. Then he hatched the idea to introduce teff grass to North America in his home state. "Geologically, it is very similar to Ethiopia," he explained. "Ethiopia is placed on the East African Rift Valley, which is very much like the Snake River Plain." Neither Wayne nor his wife, Elisabeth, is a farmer, nor do they want to be. So they persuaded actual farmers in Idaho, and in the neighboring states of Oregon and Nevada, to grow teff on contract for them. They mill the grain into flour, but until last year there wasn't a single Ethiopian restaurant or bakery in all of Idaho to sell it to. Undeterred, the Carlsons found customers. "The way we started was Wayne went through the Washington, D.C., telephone book and looked for the names that were Ethiopian," Elisabeth said. And that's how the business slowly grew for several decades, serving the far-flung Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant community in the U.S.. The Teff Co. has outgrown four different mills. The first was a little stone grinder in the Carlsons' basement. They currently occupy a remodeled brewery complex in Nampa, Idaho. The teff flour coming off the packing line could well land in an upscale natural food store or commercial bakery. According to an industry trade group, sales of alternatives to modern wheat, amaranthe, quinoa and millet, along with teff, are growing at double-digit rates each year. Teff production in the U.S. exploded over the past decade, said Oregon State University research agronomist Rich Roseberg, going from 1,200 hectares in 2003 to more than 40,000 nationally by 2010. He noted that the majority of the teff acreage in Washington state, Oregon and in the Eastern U.S. is grown for livestock forage. "Horses in particular seem to prefer it to other grass hay," he said. |
 Voice
of America/Tom Banse
Teff Co. co-founder Wayne Carlson
shows the tiny grains of teff before cleaning. There are 2,500 to 3,000
grains per gram.In Idaho, though, more of the teff production is grain for human food. Roseberg said Carlson was ahead of his time. "Mr. Carlson for a long time was the only one interested in it. He recognized the value of teff, at least for teff grain, long before any of the rest of us did," he said. Teff contains lots of nutritious calcium, iron, protein and fiber. It requires one-third to one-half less water than alfalfa, as well as substantially less fertilizer than wheat or other small grains. The University of Nevada-Reno is leading a project to breed improved varieties of teff. The aim is to make it more productive and drought tolerant in anticipation of harsher growing conditions. A marketing flier for The Teff Co. says, "Move over, quinoa, there's a new grain in town." The new grain, of course, is really an ancient one, but Wayne Carlson is not fond of the term ancient grains to describe the category. "Teff was never really a relic. It was never bypassed by history," he said. "Teff has always been the mainstay crop for millions and millions of people. It's just that they were geographically isolated in northeast Africa. So all we've done is said to the rest of the world, 'Hey, look, there's this really good stuff there. Why don't you incorporate it in your diet?' " |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado
S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| SSan José, Costa Rica, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 216 | |||||||
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| Counterfeit bed net fraud blamed on Burkina Faso man By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. prosecutors have charged a Burkina Faso man with fraud for his alleged role in a $12 million scheme to acquire and distribute faulty mosquito nets in his home country. Prosecutors in New York State said Friday that Malamine Ouedraogo had defrauded the U.S. Agency for International Development, along with the Swiss-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. According to the indictment, Ouedraogo promised to use funds from the two organizations in 2010 to buy more than 2 million mosquito nets treated with insecticide from a U.N.-recommended company in Thailand. Instead, prosecutors said, he bought the nets at a much lower cost from a supplier in China. The nets contained little or no insecticide and were packaged to look as if they had come from Thailand. Prosecutors said nets not treated with insecticide are substantially less effective in preventing malaria because they fail to repel mosquitos and can develop small holes over time that the mosquitoes can penetrate. Ouedraogo, 33, was charged with one count of wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted. He remains at large. Malaria infects 200 million people worldwide every year and kills nearly 600,000, most of them children under age 5 in Africa. There are drug treatments, but the most effective tools for preventing malaria are the insecticide-treated bed nets, which ward off the mosquitos that carry the disease, researchers have determined. Weak investigations cited after two publishers slain By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Saturday’s violent attack on two publishing houses in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, has sparked outrage among many who say the slow pace of the investigation and police inaction in the killings of bloggers in the recent past are causing more attacks. Armed with machetes and cleavers, a gang of three or four men hacked to death publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan at his Jagriti Prakashonee publishing house office in a crowded business complex of Dhaka Saturday afternoon. The attack took place within an hour after an armed group had entered the office of the Shuddhaswar publishing house in the Lalmatia area of Dhaka and launched a machete and gun attack on publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and two of his friends, bloggers Tareque Rahim and Ranadipam Basu. While Tutul, who was apparently the main target in the first attack, and Basu got away with minor injuries, Rahim, with a gunshot injury in his chest, is struggling for his life in a Dhaka hospital. Imran Sarker, who leads the Blogger and Online Activist Network in Bangladesh, said the attacks on the publishers prove the killers are targeting supporters of the free-thinkers. “A group present inside the government is patronizing the killers of the bloggers for which the cases of the past killings have not been investigated effectively, and the killers have either not been caught or not being prosecuted properly. This situation is encouraging the killers to carry out new attacks," Sarker, who has received several death threats, said. “Two attacks on a single day show how fearlessly the killers are operating in the country.” He added. Both the publishers who were attacked Saturday had published books written by the slain Bangladeshi American secular author and blogger Avijit Roy. In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, the books became hugely controversial. Roy, a critic of religious fundamentalism, was hacked to death in Dhaka in February in what was the first of a series of killings of secular bloggers in Bangladesh this year. Immediately after Roy was murdered and Ansarullah Bangla Team, a local Islamist group, claimed responsibility for the attack, Dipan and Tutul, the two publishers, received death threats for their association with Roy’s books. Hours after Saturday’s attacks, Ansar al Islam, a local Islamist group, claimed responsibility. In a statement, the group said the attacks were punishment for publishing books carrying disparaging comments against Allah and Prophet Muhammad. Monirul Islam, a joint commissioner of the detective branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said Saturday’s attacks on the two publishers appeared to be the handiwork of Ansarullah Bangla Team or an offshoot of the hardline local Islamist group. “We guess ABT uses different names like Ansar al Islam and others while claiming responsibility for such attacks. We have arrested some ABT men. But some other members of the groups are apparently still at large and they are the culprits behind Saturday’s attacks,” Islam said. The latest attacks come amid concerns about the rise of Islamist militant forces in Bangladesh. According to police, all four atheist bloggers who were hacked to death in Bangladesh earlier this year were killed by Ansarullah Bangla Team, which claims to be the local representative of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent. In recent weeks, Bangladesh also saw the killings of two foreigners, an Italian and a Japanese citizen. Last month, bombs targeted a Shi’ite procession, killing two people. The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online activities of radical Islamic groups, reported that the Islamic State claimed all three of the attacks, but Bangladesh’s government vehemently denied the extremist Sunni militant group has any foothold in the country. The government instead blamed the attacks on domestic groups like Ansarullah Bangla Team and the opposition alliance led by Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami. Many expressed fear that the killers in Bangladesh are broadening their target area and the country could see more killings in the future. Slippery slope effect feared in U.S. Syrian deployment By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Washington is digesting news the United States will, for the first time, deploy Special Forces in Syria to support local fighters battling Islamic State militants. The move is a sharp departure from troop withdrawals in other conflict zones approved by President Barack Obama. Friday's announcement prompted debate on the presidential campaign trail, but no wild cheers from Democratic or Republican candidates vying to succeed Obama in 2017. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Islamic State extremists must be confronted. “Either they win, or we do. They are not going to stop in Syria. They are not going to stop in Iraq," said Rubio. These people have to be defeated. And you defeat them by denying them operating territory.” Rubio accused President Obama of squandering America’s costly, hard-won gains in the Muslim world. “This president ran on the promise of: We are getting out of the way, we are in retreat," Rubio said. "He got elected by arguing, ‘We are out of Iraq. We are soon going to be out of Afghanistan. Vote for me.’” But Rubio said he does not favor a massive U.S. military deployment to fight the Islamic State directly. Rather, according to the senator, America must do more to rally the broader Middle East to battle Sunni radicals. His recommendation sounds similar to that of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who said he fears a deployment of up to 50 troops in Syria could be just the beginning of a larger commitment. “Fifty troops is 50 troops. But here is my nightmare: My nightmare is that the United States once again gets caught up in a quagmire, which never ends and which leads to perpetual warfare," Sanders said. "The world has got to come together.” Fellow-Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign issued a statement saying she sees merit in a limited deployment to Syria, but opposes a larger ground war in the Middle East. The White House stressed a train-and-assist role for Special Forces sent to Syria. U.S. Navy studies wreck that may be missing ship By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. Navy salvage team is preparing to launch a remotely operated submersible to confirm that wreckage discovered near the Bahamas is that of the cargo ship El Faro, lost in a hurricane last month. The 790-foot El Faro vanished on Oct. 1 with 33 crew members during Hurricane Joaquin. Authorities said they aim to survey the wreckage and hope to locate a voyage data recorder, the ship's black box, that could yield clues as to what happened. If human remains are encountered during the submersible operation, the Navy will attempt to recover them, said Peter Knudson of the National Transportation Safety Board. El Faro's captain made a distress call before the vessel disappeared, saying the ship had lost engine power during its voyage from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The captain, Michael Davidson, said the ship was listing and taking on water. An extensive search by the U.S. Coast Guard found only floating debris and one body in a survival suit, which was not recovered. The loss of El Faro was the worst maritime accident involving a U.S.-flagged vessel since 1983. Super microscope sees nanoparticles and cell parts By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Modern microelectronic devices contain billions of components crammed into thumbnail-size flakes. The chemical industry uses nanoparticles to make better cleaning products, while pharmaceutical companies use them for delivery of medicines straight into human cells. Scientists at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology have combined a specially designed spectrometer with a commercially available helium ion microscope to build a very high-resolution optical device capable of looking into these tiny worlds. It allows them to see objects 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. “We can follow where those nanoparticles have been uptaken into, for example, human cells," said senior researcher David Dowsett. "And also we can see whether or not a labeled drug is present within the cell, in the same place as the nanoparticle. So we can really start to test whether or not a delivery system is effective.” One of the first practical uses was checking the effectiveness of new cosmetic products. For instance, the new microscope helped scientists test the effectiveness of shampoos containing silver nanoparticles, which are highly toxic to bacteria living in human hair. U.S. health agency to study chronic fatigue syndrome By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has announced a study of chronic fatigue syndrome, a mysterious condition that can leave sufferers exhausted and bed-ridden. Health institute officials say they want to find a cause and treatment. For now, doctors remain baffled because there is no test to confirm a diagnosis of the disorder. Exhaustion, a hallmark of chronic fatigue syndrome, can be a symptom of many conditions. And people with chronic fatigue syndrome often have other health problems. However, the head of the health institute, Francis Collins, says with all of the genetic tools now available, researchers should be able to identify the cause, which could help lead to an effective treatment. Women are diagnosed with chronic fatigue four times more often than men. Bed rest doesn’t help alleviate the symptoms, which can include weakness, headache, sore joints, swollen lymph nodes and impaired cognitive function. In 2009, researchers announced that chronic fatigue syndrome appears to have a genetic basis. At that time, experts predicted it would take a while to identify the biological pathways involved. An estimated one million Americans suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, costing thousands of dollars a year in lost work and productivity. Oregon teen is hospitalized with flea-born black plague By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A teenager from Oregon has been diagnosed with bubonic plague and is hospitalized in intensive care, according to state officials. State and local public-health officials say the 16-year-old girl most likely was infected by a flea bite during a hunting trip earlier this month. Bubonic plague is believed to be the source of the Black Death, a pandemic that swept through Asia, Europe and Africa in the 14th century and killed up to 50 million people, according to modern estimates. The disease has never been eradicated, and the bacterium that infects humans lives on in the wild, most often in fleas but also in woodland rodents such as squirrels or chipmunks. Plague is rare in humans, and is treatable with antibiotics if caught early, but federal authorities report there has been a puzzling increase in cases this year, for unknown reasons. "Many people think of the plague as a disease of the past, but it's still very much present in our environment, particularly among wildlife,” said Emilio DeBess, a veterinarian who works for the state public health division in Oregon, which confirmed details of the current case. “Fortunately, plague remains a rare disease, but people need to take appropriate precautions with wildlife and their pets to keep it that way." Anyone infected by bubonic plague generally develops symptoms such as chills, headache, weakness and a bloody or watery cough within a few days. Oregon has only seen eight cases of bubonic plague since 1995, none of them fatal. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,006 cases of plague in the U.S. between 1900 and 2012. Eighty percent were victims of bubonic plague, one of three varieties of plague caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 216 | |||||||||
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Seasonless life
adds to the confusion
Retirement is confusing. I
used to have this nicely segmented life: I went to work. I came
home. There was cooking and cleaning, a little
The other day I was chatting with a friend and mentioned that our gardener had been with us a year. Shock! Without seasons, it gets hard to label the passage of time. It was autumn when he started with us. It is autumn now. Not having a season is usually fine with me because I can garden all year round. All that is required is to know whether the weather will be hot and dry or hot and wet. HAH! Evidently, we live in that area of Costa Rica where the Green Season (so named so tourists wouldn't know that it would be raining most of the day) and the Dry Season have absolutely no meaning. Here we have, as Metric Man puts it, la estación lluviosa y la estación MAS lluviosa, "the rainy season and the rainier season." Evidently just over the hill, Caribbean weather reigns dumping rains into Lake Arenal. Look toward the east from Cañas or Liberia and you will usually see what looks like a fluffy white shawl draped over our mountains. Drive to Tronodora, and it is hot and dry. Drive from there to Nuevo Arenal, and you will often drive into something between drizzle and deluge. If the center of the United States is its bread basket then we are the water bucket of Costa Rica. Understand, I am not complaining. The soil is fertile, there is usually some part of the day in which to garden and a lot of things do really well here. Squash, melons, fruit trees, they love a lot of water. Some day, though, I am going to have to put a roof on part of the garden to shelter tomatoes and other things that don't like to be drenched day after day. It's a challenge, and I admit to all my fellow gardeners that I still haven't gotten it quite right. But I keep trying!  Plant of the Week
Isn't a plant! Well, it's actually a heliconia leaf. I love
my heliconia, and we have a number of varieties growing on the
property. Who knew they could be dangerous? As you see from the
picture, there is a mango sized wasp nest on the underside of the leaf.
They turned out to be quite nasty, but my groundskeeper managed to get
away with just a couple of stings. The moral of this tale is: Watch Out! Bad things can hide under an innocent leaf! If you would like to suggest a topic for this column, simply send a letter to the editor. And, for more garden tips, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arenal-Gardeners/413220712106845 |
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| From Page 7: Heredia firm will step up employment Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The services sector company Auxis says that it will invest $30 million in Costa Rica in the next five years, in addition to hiring up to 700 people more, to expand its service center in the country. Costa Rica was selected by the company as the main focus of its services in Latin America, the firm reported. The expanded operation will allow its customers to support multinational and Fortune 500 companies in the United States and Latin America. Among its clients are Pepsi, Target, Shoes for Crews and Tiger Direct. Auxis supports its customers in areas such as: informational technology services for implementation and cloud design, servers support, security, network operations centers solutions, software development, business analysis and consulting. The service includes back office finance and accounting, human resources, customer service and product support, electronic commerce and payment processing. Everything is in multiple languages including English, Portuguese and French. Currently the company is located in the American Free Zone in Heredia with over 200 employees currently. The firm has been here for five years. |
