Piano Concert
By pianist Carlos González, Feb. 5, 8 p.m., National Theater, Ave. 2, Ca. 3/5.

Jazz jam session
Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m., www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

New women in town
Women's meeting for new arrivals, featuring Carolyn Ross, speaking on personal safety and home security, coffee/tea social at 9:30 a.m., meeting at 10 a.m., Laurie Blizzard's B&B, Cariari, casafloradora1@yahoo.com, 249-2673.

Maggie Brooks
Emoción de la Naturaleza,” today through Feb. 28, Children's Museum, 239-0539.

By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

Yurelia and Fiorella Rocha were walking, talking and even playfully biting at one another at the Marriott Hotel near Costa Rica's Juan Santamaría International Airport yesterday – their first day back on home turf as separate children.

Groggy at first, encircled by snapping photographers and television cameras after a flight from California, the formerly conjoined twins were handed toys and lipstick to play with, and soon warmed up to the reporters.

The 29-month-old Rocha girls were born attached at the chest and abdomen, heart and liver.

With the help of a U.S. charity, Mending Kids International, the twins, accompanied by their mother, María Elizabeth Rocha, and teenage sister, Cintia López, were able to obtain the high-risk operation in November at Stanford University in California.

Facing a 50% chance of survival, according to Dr. Carlos Esquivel, who oversaw the liver operation, Yurelia and Fiorella recovered more quickly than expected and flew home yesterday as individuals.

“As you can see, they've become quite normal little girls,” said Cris Embleton, founder and executive director of Mending Kids International.

“And they have amazing personalities: Fiorella is very fearless and adventuresome; Yurelia is very shy and quiet,” she said, echoing the mother's words at a press conference last month in California, the twins' first public appearance since the operation (TT, Jan. 25).

Embleton thanked the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and lead surgeon Gary Hartmen for carrying out the procedure.

“The day the girls were separated, they (the doctors) started at 7 in the morning to put all the wires in and by 11:30 they were separated and by 12:30 one of them was already in the ICU (intensive care unit),” she said.

A very grateful María Elizabeth Rocha, 40, thanked God and the people of Costa Rica and her native Nicaragua for showing concern about the fate of Yurelia and Fiorella, her 10th and 11th children.

Since the operation, it hasn't all been doctor visits and media events. Embleton said there were fun times too.

“Two days before we came down here we did what every child who comes to America wants to do, and that is we took them to Disney Land,” she said.

Legislators, ministers and environmentalists joined yesterday in urging the central government to stand firm on its orders to close the Hotel Allegro Papagayo.

Last Wednesday, the 300-room Guanacaste hotel – which houses almost 600 guests – was ordered closed in 24 hours by officials from the Health Ministry, who had discovered clandestine pipes dumping sewage into an adjoining estuary, which leads to the Pacific Ocean.

The hotel appealed, stalling closure for almost five days, but yesterday Health Minister María Luisa Avila confirmed the order and said appeals had been denied.

Environment and Energy Minister Roberto Dobles also showed his support.

“This hotel must have a sewage treatment plant…and right now, that is not the case,” said Dobles, citing the hotel's months of violations and warnings issued by Environment Ministry (MINAE).

Three hours later, legislators from the Citizen Action Party (PAC) gathered at the National Assembly, urging the immediate closure of the hotel and calling for more forceful compliance with the country's environmental laws.

“Our government institutions must fight to assure laws are followed. In this case, as in so many others in Guanacaste, the authorities don't intervene or they do it too late. Now is the time,” said Guanacaste legislator José Rosales.

The hotel, part of the government-sponsored Papagayo Tourism Project in the northwestern corner of Costa Rica has long been hailed as “eco-friendly” by government officials and Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) promotion.

Environmentalists, including the Guanacaste Brotherhood, the local environmental group that warned of the situation three weeks prior, and the Costa Rican Federation for the Environment (FECON), an umbrella group for almost 30 environmental groups countrywide, also showed their support for the hotel's closure.

“This has gone on long enough. The hotel is still not closed. The situation is outrageous, and we urge the government to take action now,” said Gadi Amit, vice president of the Guanacaste Brotherhood.

Health Ministry officials first discovered the hotel dumping sewage into the neighboring estuary via hidden pipes in April. Two weeks later, hotel manager Guillermo Guerra assured them in a written letter that the problem had been “definitely solved.”

Over the next few months, as reported Jan. 25 in The Tico Times, residents and government officials discovered the hotel was trucking its sewage to overburdened and often illegal dumpsites throughout Guanacaste, transferring the contamination from its own estuary to neighboring towns.

Last week, after months of foot-dragging, the Health Ministry called for the hotel's closure until the hotel could prove operation of a functioning sewage treatment plant, a stipulation required in its original contract with the government.

Inflation went up only 0.73% last month, the second-lowest January inflation numbers in a decade. Dropping costs in clothing, transportation and communications helped keep the numbers low.

Food costs, however, continue to rise. The cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks went up 0.94%, meaning that for the last 12 months alone food prices have gone up 20.54%.

Increases in the costs of housing and education were also steep, coming in at 2.40% and 3.13%, respectively.

Cumulative inflation for the last 12-month period remains above 10%. The Central Bank has set its inflation target for 2008 at 8%, plus or minus one point.