Surfing photo report: Costa Rican surfer Jason Torres shows he knows his country's waves. Click on the image for more photos from the World Surfing Games at Playa Hermosa, Jacó.

Ronald Reyes | Tico Times

As the brackets of the International Surfing Association (ISA) World Surfing Games whittle down, members of the same team are beginning to run into each other; not as teammates, but as competitors.

This is the case for Costa Rica's Jason Torres and Gilbert Brown, as well as U.S. surfers Cory Lopez and Austin Ware, who will compete in the same heats of the Open competition on Thursday.

Brown and Torres, who have established themselves as top surfers in the competition that has engulfed the central Pacific towns of Playa Hermosa and Jacó, will compete Thursday and not on Wednesday, as originally expected. Wednesday will feature the beginning of the longboard competition.

Jason Flores of France, who is ranked among the top 10 surfers in the world, and Hank Gaskett of Hawaii, who has finished first in each of his three heats thus far, will compete in the same heat with Torres and Brown.

In heat number 2, U.S. surfers Lopez and Ware face off against Carlos Cabrero of Puerto Rico and Manuel Selman of Chile . Ware has won all three of his previous heats, while Lopez has won two of three.

On Tuesday, 16-year-old Costa Rican Carlos Muñoz won two repercharge heats on to advance to the sixth round of the repercharge competition on Thursday. Muñoz overcame two interference penalties on Tuesday, one in each heat, to advance.

Three Costa Rican surfers – Luis Vindas, Lisbeth Vindas and Natalie Bernold – were eliminated from the Open competition on Tuesday. Luis Vindas was eliminated in the fourth round of repercharge and finished the tournament in 25th place.

On the women's side, Lisbeth Vindas was eliminated in the fifth round of repercharge and finished among the top 16 surfers of the competition. In the ISA World Surfing Games in Portugal in 2008, she finished 25th.

Also eliminated on the women's side was 17-year-old Bernold, who finished fourth in her fourth round repercharge heat. Bernold advanced through three rounds of the competition before her elimination Tuesday.

In the men's Open competition, only 24 surfers remain; 16 in the primary grouping and eight in the repercharge group. The ISA World Surfing Games are essentially a double elimination format. If a surfer finishes 1st or 2nd in a four-surfer heat, they remain in the primary grouping. If a surfer finishes 3rd or 4th in a heat, they are demoted to the repercharge grouping. If a surfer finishes in 3rd or 4th in a repercharge heat, they are eliminated from the competition.

Watch the World Surfing Games live here: http://www.billabongpro.com/isa09/live.php

President Oscar Arias cut the ribbon Tuesday at the inauguration of the new offices of Oracle, one of the world's largest business software companies.

The ceremony took place at the new 3,000-square meter office complex in Santa Ana, located in the Forum II free-trade zone. Oracle has invested over $100 million in its Costa Rica expansion.

“We are thankful Oracle has chosen to expand their operations in Costa Rica,” Arias said at the ceremony. “It gives us one more sign that our efforts and sacrifices are continuing in the right direction, in the direction of development and modernity.”

Arias indicated that further economic stimulation, such as the investment of Oracle, will help alleviate the effects of the economic crisis. Oracle, which is based in California, will employ 230 people at the new location. Oracle's other Costa Rican offices are located in downtown San José.

Eric Brenner, the vice president of industries for Oracle in Latin America, explained that the reason for the expansion is the ease of doing business in Costa Rica. Brenner said the cooperative demeanor of the people and the country's established social and legal systems encouraged Oracle to commit to the expansion.

“Costa Rica has provided us with the conditions to offer a world class service,” said Brenner.

Oracle currently provides software for several Costa Rican organizations, including the University of Costa Rica, the National Biodiversity Institute, the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica and the Costa Rican Water and Sewer Institute, as well as many others.

The revamped exhibit displaying Costa Rica's pre-Columbian past reopened in the National Museum Tuesday morning after being closed to the public for nearly a year.

The museum's Pre-Columbian History Room was redesigned to “invite boys and girls – and adults, too – to learn and observe” the cultures and beliefs of peoples preceding the arrival of the Spanish, said National Museum archeologist Minor Castro.

After the museum invested more than $160,000 in the project, the room reopened with a new, engaging design and 25,000 copies of a booklet to help interest children interested in learning about the country's pre-Columbian past. Before the redesign, the exhibit was “too formal” and “kids, especially, got bored,” Castro said.

The room takes up a long corridor of National Museum, which used to be the military barracks before Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948.

The exhibit begins, surprisingly, with mammoth jaw bones and a number of other bones reflecting the last ice age, when Costa Rica wasn't the tropical paradise it is today. The first inhabitants came to the area between 10,000 and 8,000 B.C.E., and possessed a very nomadic lifestyle. The first inhabitants to cultivate crops lived a millennia or two B.C.E.

And while its miniature models and illustrations of the types of villages and housing used at the time provide a beautiful way of spurring the imagination, the museum's director, Rocío Fernández, said it goes far beyond looks.

“We can't only think about the beauty and aesthetics,” she said. “But we think about the manner it's presented and what it represents – like a didactic guide” through the nation's early history.

While the redesign was also directed at adults, it was the interest of children that the museum was really aiming to capture.

“We have to prepare the next generation to identify and preserve their heritage,” said Culture Minister María Elena Carballo. “I've seen how kids always play with the masks of the mummies and get close with the Egyptian culture…. (We) wanted to do that with the culture here.'

So far, 25,000 of the interactive books have been printed. They describe the job of archeologists, the importance of the different cultures that lived in Costa Rica, and offer different activities, like cutting out parts of the book to make a pre-Columbian house.

Costa Rican health officials are recommending that pregnant women take no risks in the case they develop symptoms of the A(H1N1) flu virus.

“Due to the physical changes that pregnant women undergo in their condition, they have an elevated risk of complications resulting from the flu virus,” read a statement issued by the Health Ministry on Tuesday.

The ministry recommends that pregnant women “in the presence of any discomfort or symptoms, even those not directly attributable to the A(H1N1) flu” consult the nearest health facility and to avoid crowded places such as shopping malls, entertainment venues, restaurants and cinemas.

The health ministry also recommends that nursing mothers showing symptoms continue breastfeeding and seek antiviral treatment.

Since the virus first entered Costa Rica in late April, at least 25 people have died of complications resulting from the flu. An additional 755 were confirmed to be carrying the virus.

Of those who died, roughly 36 percent suffered from a lung condition, 40 percent were obese and 20 percent had high cholesterol.

The virus continues to affect predominantly young people, with 60 percent of the confirmed cases in the Central American region existing in children under 20.