Puerto Viejo San Arte festival
Workshops and talks on holistic medicine, today, 2:30-6 p.m.; Saturday, 8:30-6 p.m.; Sunday, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Jacaranda Hotel, Puerto Viejo. Donations accepted. 

Multicultural celebration
Features dancing, food, live music, 4-8 p.m., former Banco Anglo, 2nd floor, next to Terra U, San Pedro, 8874-7625.

Film Forum: ‘Traffic'
6 p.m., former Banco Anglo, San Pedro, 8874-7625.

Film ‘Jules et Jim'
French Film Festival, 6 p.m., Alliance Française.

‘Voces latinoamericanas'
Storytelling, 6 p.m., José Figueres Cultural Center, San Ramón, Alajuela, 2447-2178.

Chamber music concert
Iván Guerra (violin), Eduardo Madrigal (Cello) and Roberto Vargas (Piano), 7 p.m., Clorito Picado Auditorium, National University, Heredia, 2277-3313.

National Symphony Orchestra
Famous film and cartoon scores, 7 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m., National Theater, Avenida 2, 2221-9417.

Chagall exhibit
“The Odyssey,” 83 lithographs of late works by Marc Chagall, through Nov. 10, Calderón Guardia Museum, Calle 25, Avenidas 11/3, Barrio Escalante, 2222-6392 (see www.ticotimes.net/culture.htm).

Suretka indigenous festival
Theater, dance, music, crafts, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. 

Charity car wash
8 a.m.-2 p.m., British School of Costa Rica, end of Rohrmoser Boulevard. 

NY Met Opera ‘Salome'
Live transmission from the Metropolitan Opera, 11 a.m., Eugene O'Neill Theater, Barrio Dent, 2235-9433.

Jazz concert
Japan Week, 7 p.m., Cartago Municipality.

Amar el Arab in concert
Middle Eastern music, belly dancing, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Le*Pop in concert
Pop, 10 p.m., Latino Rock Café, across from La Primavera gas station, Barrio La California, 222-4719.

Swing en 4 in concert
Jazz, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Cultural Day activities
10 a.m.-12 p.m., Central Bank Museums, San José. 

Heredia cultural festival
Music, food, sports, crafts fair, through Tuesday, Mercedes Sur Church grounds, Mercedes Sur, Heredia.

Ecological hike
Organized by Caminatas Shkuk, Concepción de San Isidro, Heredia, 10 km, 2223-3186, 8306-6354. 

Movement therapy workshop
With Flor González, 9 a.m., Casa Ames, Los Yoses, 2203-4759.

María Pretiz in concert
Trova, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

National Symphony Orchestra
Famous film and cartoon scores, 5 p.m., National Theater, Avenida 2, 2221-9417.

Canadian Thanksgiving dinner
Turkey with all the trimmings, door prizes, Thanksgiving hat contest, sponsored by Canadian Club of Costa Rica, 1 p.m., Rock & Roll Bar & Grill, Santa Ana.

A “tropical wave” – weatherman-speak for rain, rain and more rain – is likely to traverse Costa Rica today, said the National Meteorological Institute yesterday.

Meteorologist Evelyn Quirós said the weather system, called an onda tropical in Spanish, will start early morning on the Caribbean side and sweep across the country, with the chance of becoming a tropical storm after it spills over into the Pacific Ocean by early evening.

Saturday and Sunday should see scattered showers typical of the late rainy season, but no more onda, she said.

The wave is common for October but puts a damper on efforts to rebuild some 300 homes, many in Cartago and eastern San José, that were soaked and pummeled in last week's heavy rains and runoff from overflowing rivers. Dozens of families took shelter in churches-turned-dry-havens, as emergency officials issued “green” and then “yellow” alerts – first and second weather warning levels – and emergency workers raced to evacuate residents and begin rebuilding.

A weakening Hurricane Norbert headed toward Mexico's Baja California yesterday, while Tropical Storm Odile – which as a low-pressure system dumped on Costa Rica last week – gained steam off Mexico's Pacific coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

Instead of re-planning their annual carnival, municipal officials of Limón, on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, say they will focus on acquiring a dump to avoid future problems with city events.

Health Minister María Luisa Avila shut down Limón's carnival – originally set for this weekend – for the second year in a row because of the “lamentable” state of the Caribbean port city's trash collection, which she feared could cause another outbreak of dengue fever.

Limón Mayor Eduardo Barboza said the town won't be submitting a new logistical plan to the minister to reschedule the carnival.

Instead, the town will try to locate a landfill closer to their city than the one they currently use, which is 100 kilometers away. The distance means that trash piles up in Limón's streets, attracting mosquitoes and, according to the minister, “a ton of rats.”

“If they had a low-risk farm for a dumping site I'd have had no problem giving them permission,” Avila said. “They have a million and one excuses.”

The mayor said they had trouble navigating the rules for buying and regulating a trash dump, but now they hope to buy a landfill site in nearby Tomatal before the end of the year.

Charlie Wanger, a real estate agent in Puerto Viejo for more than 10 years, said several clients contacted him about properties in Talamanca that could be used for waste disposal after Limón's trash problem made national news last week.

MANAGUA – Nicaragua is set to add a digit onto its seven-digit phone numbers, following the path of Costa Rica earlier this year.

The switch to eight digits is slated for April 1.

The measure, announced this week by the Nicaraguan Telecommunications and Mail Institute (TELCOR), comes at a time when phone numbers have run out, mainly because of the rapid growth in the mobile sector.

Just as in Costa Rica, Nicaragua will add “2” before landline numbers and “8” before cell phone numbers, TELCOR said in the state-published La Gaceta.