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Slow-Moving Taxi Protest Blocks Traffic
By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff
aroberson@ticotimes.net
Hundreds of red, official taxis around the San José area yesterday used the method of “tortuguismo,” impeding traffic flow by driving slowly along main roads to make their opinions heard about private car services they say pose unfair competition.
Costa Rica’s commercial codeallows private drivers, or porteadores, to pick up passengers who have called them from a designated place, but they cannot legally pick up passengers from the street.
Red taxis around the country this week have protested to pressure the Legislative Assembly pass a bill banning porteadores and also called for stricter regulation of illegal taxis or piratas.
Yesterday, taxis from the San José area formed chains and crept along main streets leading into the city, blocking traffic flow as drivers got stuck behind them, according to Transit Police Operations Official Marco Locija.
Taxi drivers also used this tactic in the Pacific province of Puntarenas Monday and around Liberia, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, on Tuesday, Locija said.
“It’s not fair that they (taxi drivers) affect the rest of the population with their complaints,” driver Jennifer Mora told the daily Al Día.
Meanwhile, Vice-Minister of Public Works and Transport Viviana Martín Wednesday ordered transit police to fine taxis traveling less than 40 kilometers per hour (the minimum speed established by law) along highways, according to the daily La Nación.
Transit police in the San José area cannot fine taxis because there is no legal minimum speed in urban areas, but police have tried to “control the situation to prevent conflict,” Locija said.
Police Continue Investigating Nosara Killing
By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff
aroberson@ticotimes.net
Authorities are continuing to investigate the death of Carl David Brainard, a U.S. citizen whose body was found July 12 in the northwestern beach town of Nosara.
Police have obtained fingerprints from the inside of the house where Brainard’s body was discovered by a gardener, Nosara Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) Director Greylin Moncada said. Also, the Toyota 4-Runner that was stolen from in front of the house was discovered in Tibás, north of San José, and police have obtained fingerprints from its interior.
Moncada said police are analyzing the fingerprints to see if they are clear enough to be used as evidence, though they have no suspects in the death.
Preliminary autopsy reports indicate that Brainard suffered various wounds, including a fractured trachea, which caused him to suffocate, Moncada said.
Meanwhile, Brainard’s son Jeff, 42, traveled to Costa Rica from the U.S. state of Michigan this week to speak with authorities about his 65-year-old father’s death.
Jeff Brainard told The Tico Times that the house in which his father’s body was found belonged to a friend. Carl Brainard was moving into the house to watch over it and had borrowed the 4-Runner from another friend to move his things in, his son said.
Jeff Brainard, who has been to Nosara several times to surf, said he introduced his father to the town 10 years ago. Carl Brainard moved to Nosara two years ago, he said.
“He made more and more friends and soon became a staple there,” Jeff Brainard said.
Carl Brainard worked at the Nosara Real Estate office answering phones and helping out the realtors, but did not sell real estate; he also worked at the Juice Lab smoothie bar next door.
Jeff Brainard said he has no idea who would want to kill his father and wonders if someone followed him in the 4-Runner with the intention of stealing it.
“He was such a benign person, down here doing nothing but being retired,” Jeff Brainard said.
Police Destroy 734 Kilograms of Drugs
By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff
aroberson@ticotimes.net
Costa Rican authorities yesterday burned 734 kilograms of drugs, mostly cocaine and marijuana, which were seized by the Public Security Ministry in the past few months, according to a statement from the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ).
The drugs, which also included 6.6 kilograms of heroine and 2.6 kilograms of crack, were burned in an oven belonging to the cement manufacturing company Holcim at its plant in Cartago, east of San José, OIJ spokeswoman Margarita Morales said.
This is the first drug destruction the ministry has carried out since May, when 909 kilograms of drugs were destroyed.
In 2005, the Public Security Ministry seized a total of 10 tons of cocaine, the largest quantity seized in the country’s history, in addition to 106 doses of crack and more than 1 million marijuana plants, according to the wire service ACAN-EFE.
Central American Countries Work
to Reduce Energy Consumption
Representatives from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are working on strategies to help industrial and commercial businesses reduce energy consumption though a five-year project sponsored by the Energy Network Foundation (BUN-CA), according to a statement from the foundation.
The project, also sponsored by the Global Environmental Fund (GEF) and the U.S. Development Programme (UNDP), seeks to promote energy efficiency in Central America’s commercial and industrial sectors by providing assistance to small and medium business to reduce their energy consumption.
This is the first stage of the five-year project, the statement said, and a group of 35 experts from around the region met in San José earlier this month to discuss how to reach the project’s goals.
Costa Rica’s energy consumption rate is growing at an average rate of 5% per year, creating the need to “promote a new culture of energy saving and motivate businesses to conserve,” said BUN-CA president José María Blanco.
“In the realm of Central American public policy, we need to establish rules to avoid the importing of inefficient electronic equipment,” Blanco added.
Business owners who want more information about the program can call BUN-CA at 283-8835.
-Tico Times
Save the Tico Humpbacks: A Whale of a Proposal
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The biggest being you are likely to see in Costa Rica is the humpback whale, and now is probably the best time of year to see one here. These massive creatures arrive from as far away as the Southern Ocean International Whale Sanctuary, the ring of ocean surrounding Antarctica. The whales are coming back home to court, mate, give birth to the next generation of Costa Rican whales, and generate a lot of money for Costa Ricans working in tourism.
They make the now famous Antarctic-to-Costa-Rica trek, one of the longest in the animal kingdom, because Costa Rica’s waters are a prime place to make a little whale big enough to survive in cold seas full of large predators. Around the end of the rainy season, they head back to the Southern Ocean, the best place in the world for these unique mammals to become full-sized whales.
Adult whales need to eat more than your car weighs every day to grow bigger than a bus, and they cannot find that much food in Costa Rica. The Southern Ocean is where whales feast on vast amounts of shrimp-like krill and other tiny creatures that congregate into cloud-sized swarms. But Costa Rican-born whales may be in big trouble when they head back south for food this year.
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Finshots: Photographs of fin prints can be used to identify whales born in Costa Rican waters. |
The same whales that thrill tourists and locals alike and support one of the fastest-growing segments of Costa Rican tourism may be hunted and killed by illegal Japanese whalers when they return to the Southern Ocean. According to the May 2006 issue of National Geographic Adventure magazine, when the whales arrive south, Japan plans to kill 50 or so humpbacks in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary for research and later sale of the meat. Fifty dead Tico whales would probably mean the end of Costa Rica’s whale watching, as probably only about 50 of these endangered species come to Costa Rica each rainy season.
So what can tiny Costa Rica do against a powerful First-World nation that is an expert at exploiting the resources of other countries? Probably not much, but perhaps we could take an important symbolic step. Using fin-print photos, why not declare the easily identifiable whales born in Costa Rican waters Ticos, and ask the countries of the world to respect these citizens and not kill them when they visit other places? The whales will generate far more money in the long run from whale watchers in Antarctica and Costa Rica than they will with a onetime sale of meat in a fish market.
Tourists of the world are already starting to boycott nations that support whaling. By declaring whales born here to be Ticos, Costa Rica would set a worldwide example of helping to protect these mysteriously intelligent mammals that have been hunted to near extinction in the past. We would also be poised to receive all the tourists who will stop going to offending destinations that normally compete with Costa Rica.
Too bad Nicaragua doesn’t see the writing on the wall. If it worked together with Costa Rica to develop dolphin and whale tourism, both countries could make untold money year after year. Sadly, at least one Japanese whale-factory ship is registered in Panama, and that might not bode well for our other neighbor’s marine tourism prospects. The three countries working together would be that much more influential, and could help establish the area as a mega marine tourism destination.
If you like the idea of Costa Rica’s whales not being killed when they visit feeding waters, or if you like to make money working with tourism, tell everyone you know to help save these whales by declaring them officially Ticos.
For more information, call 835-6041, e-mail shawn@costacetacea.com or visit www.costacetacea.com.
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