Britney Spears was the last person I expected to see in my local, closet sized, grocery store this morning in Costa Rica. Ok, I didn’t see her per say, but she was on the cover of the local newspaper. In fact, she was on the front page two days in a row. More random than that is the fact she out shines her travel mate, Mel Gibson.

My favorite random news website, What Would Tyler Durden Do, said it best when he said:

“Mel Gibson and Britney Spears took a private plane out of LA this morning to spend two days together in Costa Rica.

You could just mash your forehead into the keyboard and never come up with a more random sentence than that…..

…What are the odds Britney even knows they’re leaving LA. Everything in LA sounds something like “Costa” or “Rica” and 90 percent of the signs are written in Spanish anyway. She probably thinks they’re in Reseda. And that “Costa Rica” is a restaurant. Home of the 5 Pound Burrito!”

According to news sources, Britney and Mel are old friends from back in the day when they lived in the same community. Apparently Mel is taking Britney and her family for a vacation at his house in Costa Rica.

Original article can be found here: Britney Spears and Mel Gibson in Costa Rica

The most recent version of Tropical Tales is now online in PDF format at the Tropical Tales website.

If you are unfamiliar with the Tropical Tales newspaper, let me explain. Tropical Tales is the brain child of a local expat and owner of Tropical Tales Tours. The newspaper covers the greater south eastern portion of the Caribbean coast. The cities include Puerto Viejo and the surrounding areas. The news paper combines some local stories, ads, and random Caribbean history about pirates, zombies, and more.

The most recent issue of the Tropical Tales newspaper includes:

• Sea Monsters
• The Bloop
• Howler Monkeys
• Arte Viva ’07
• Rondon Soup Recipe
• Local Ads

If you are looking for a good read or want to get to know a little bit more about the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica, check out the Tropical Tales Newspaper.

Original article can be found here: Tropical Tales Issue #10

As of March 20, 2008, all phone number in Costa Rica will be 8 digits long instead of 7. This change will include both land lines and cell phones. the only numbers that will be unaffected by this change are 911 and 800 numbers.

The following changes will be taking place:

• Land line numbers starting with a 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be given an extra ‘2’ at the beginning of their number.
• Mobile phone numbers starting with 3, 8 and 9 will be given an extra ‘8’ at the beginning of their number.

ICE, the Costa Rica Electrical Institute has been working hard over the last few months to get the word out. There has been everything from flyer’s on the street to nation wide TV commercials. Thanks to such a strong marketing effort by ICE, there should only be a small period of hassle and confusion surrounding this change.

ICE has also been contacting major phone companies about the change. Hopefully these announcements will make the transition for international calls to Costa Rica a bit easier. If you live in Costa Rica, you may want to start alerting friends and family abroad of the changes as soon as possible.

If you ask me, this is a very strange way to do things. Phone numbers in Costa Rica already have “area codes”, so why not follow many other major US areas by simply making callers dial the area code in addition to the phone number. If anyone knows the reasoning behind this, I would sure be interested in hearing it.

I guess thats just Costa Rica for you.

Original article can be found here: Costa Rica Phone Numbers to Change

Within the next 2 to 3 years Costa Rica plans on building an electric train system. These plans came after a Brazilian company was hired to carry out a study on the project to determine its feasibility. The actually construction of the project has been estimated at $90 million. The real budget for the project will depend on financial backing from the banking corporations.

Read more about this here.

Original article can be found here: Electric Trains in Costa Rica

According to USA Today, more U.S. airports are offering international flights. While already busy international airports such as Miami and New York haven’t seen much growth; places like Fort Lauderdale, Denver, and Cleveland have doubled in flights.

This increase in international flights could lead to lower airfare prices in airports who didn’t previously have a large number of originating international flights.

To see the stats and read more about this increase in international flights, check out the USA Today article here.

Original article can be found here: Increase in International Flights