Tourism growth continued to be strong in January, despite fears that an economic slowdown in the United States might put a damper on this year.

Measured by traffic at the Juan Santamaría and Daniel Oduber Quirós international airports, tourism was up 13.7% over January 2007.

In raw numbers, that's 145,145 tourists that arrived last month at those airports, a figure Tourism Minister Carlos Benavides described as “getting off on the right foot.”

Visitors to Costa Rica in 2007 increased 11.5% over the previous year's numbers.

-Tico Times