Diners at the Al Pinino Restaurant and the Saquella Café in the Multi-Central Paco shopping center in Escazu were surprised Saturday afternoon, August 11, at about 1:00 P.M. with thick billowing smoke emerging from what appeared initially to be a roof fire over the Saquella Café. Waiters were noticing customers to leave the restaurants for their protection and move their cars while the cause of the blaze was being determined and the fire department would soon be arriving.
Randy Gritz knows all about planning tropical weddings, and she should, as she has designed and organized over 200 of them in the past seven years! Originally from Philadelphia, Randy has made Costa Rica home for the last 20 years. She speaks fluent Spanish, has an extensive knowledge of the country and the people, which helps her successfully navigate the often unpredictable course of planning the perfect wedding ceremony and reception.
“Planning a wedding is like mounting a theatrical production,” says Randy. For years she has been an active member, producer and stage manager for The Little Theatre Group of Costa Rica. Founded in 1949 by Bert Williams, the Little Theatre Group is the oldest continuously running English-language theatre in Central or South America. A dedicated wedding professional and member of the theater group, she is always aware that this very special day is one that the happy couple and their family will remember for the rest of their lives, and therefore, must be perfect in every detail. “Each wedding has a different script and budget, and just like before the opening night of a play, a wedding requires careful direction and detailed planning,” states Randy.
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Seven adventures and it had all come down to this – the grand finale. Mike and Samantha vs. Miles and Heather for all the marbles, or rather a first class trip around the world. Having won three of the adventures together, including last week’s, Mike and Samantha came into the final the odds-on favorites.
On the morning of the final competition, Samantha read a card full of encouraging words from her mom. ( Watching this, I’m thinking if only mail service were that good in the city!) Reading how much her mom loved her, how supportive she was, made Samantha cry. Mike got all choked up too just because Samantha had allowed to him to read over her shoulder.
Where'd Mike and Miles go?
THE ADVENTURE
The girls showed up at the starting line in their itty-bitty, teeny-weeny (minus the polka-dot) bikinis for the second week in a row. Although I can’t be sure, I assume from previous experience that Mike and Miles were there, too. Once Darren counted down from three, the teams took off on a final adventure that would last not one but two days, and consist of swimming, canoeing, changing clothes in front of one’s partner, assembling an oxcart from scratch, coping with a dysenteric mammal, pitching a tent, pitching a fit, and climbing to the top of a volcano only to run back down again for no apparent reason.
Bare Down: The final 3 couples battle to win that trip around the world...and look good doing it.
This week the three remaining couples met Darren not in the jungle but at the beach in their skivvies. He then told them to swim for it by which he meant a boat anchored maybe 50 meters offshore. No problem, right? No, none – except that Miles from Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, didn’t know how to swim. Fearing that he might drown, he was outfitted with a life jacket and training wheels. Having retrieved a map from underwater, all three couples started paddling like mad (on paddle boards) in a race to find five coin-filled bags and deliver them to an oddly named gentleman at a place called Coco’s Bar in town (Ed. Note: In Cahuita, for those curious). While Mike was smacking Samantha in the head with a paddle, Skip, stoked by the sight of Teresa’s rear end staring him straight in the face, rowed his team into an early lead. Meanwhile, Heather was doing her best to keep Miles from ending up face down in the kiddie pool. Having been first to retrieve a fourth bag at the pier, Skip and Teresa were feeling pretty good about themselves at this point in the adventure. The only thing between them and the win was recovering the fifth bag and delivering it to that dude at Coco’s. But, then the unthinkable happened. Teresa lost the fourth bag somewhere between the pier and forever. And just like that their lead completely evaporated. Yes, they backtracked, crossed paths with a mapache, went back into the water at the pier, but it was all for naught. They were toast. It was a two-team race after that.
Last night episode began with a ‘big ass’ armadillo sighting. Among some indigenous peoples, this apparently is a sign of good things to come. If only Steele was conversant with aboriginal folklore, he would’ve known when he saw that ‘big ass’ armadillo – that his luck was about to change.
THE ADVENTURE
Have you ever had to find a carved stone mask hidden in a fichus tree? Well, neither have I. But, that’s exactly what the remaining five couples had to do last night. Then, they had to find 4 more hidden variously on a rock pile, a guava grove, on top of a boulder, and behind a waterfall. I won’t bore you with a tedious blow-by-blow description of the adventure. Suffice it to say, Steele and Erica miraculously came in second, Skip instructed Teresa to find a horse with a “nice ass,” and, upon sliding into a mud pit, Erica emerged to say she detected the smell of horse**** in the air. Along with another night at The Oasis, winning couple Samantha and Mike also won immunity and two tickets on a zip line.
Uh oh, the ol' switcheroo.
At some point between episodes 4 and 5, somebody somewhere decided that the show had become just a tad too cozy. Attachments had formed, couples had coalesced, but the show wasn’t even halfway done yet! So, this week producers decided to mix it up a bit, to gum up the works. Once Darren had described the week’s adventure in minute detail to the six remaining couples, he pulled the ol’ switcheroo, announcing that, before setting off on said adventure, the men were to pick brand new partners. It didn’t come as much of a surprise when last week’s first and second place finishers, Derek and Ben, respectively chose Erica and Samantha to be their new partners. Likewise, it was hardly a shock, that, despite his good looks, all the girls dreaded the prospect of being picked by Steele, fearing the curse. (Cue thunder and lightening.)
Remind me. Had we seen the contestants chatting in the aftermath of the previous week’s Couples’ Choice Cermenony to start an episode before? Well, that’s what happened last night. It was illuminating too in so far as Derek told everyone within earshot, including his partner Jess, that he nearly dumped her for Samantha, explaining that – hey, he could always ‘circle back’ if things didn’t work out with Samantha. When wiry little Mike got wind of this, he tried to impart the hands-off message to Derek. May have even worked, too, in the end.
Jason and Jessi looking bitter (and blurry.)
Thanks to creepy Night Vision Goggles-O-Rama, we got to watch a couple of the new couples dispensing with pleasantries and getting right down to a snog (Yes, I’m writing from England) in bed. We also got to see Ben bring Brandee breakfast in bed on the occasion of her 26th birthday, and the sad sight of Jessi blowing off Jason’s gift of a bouquet of freshly cut jungle flowers.
…So, let’s see now, with Vanessa having been given the boot last week and Peter having been redirected to the caves at Lascaux, eight couples entered last night’s episode…
THE ADVENTURE
Steele rowing Kym to her doom.
Darren informed the sixteen competitors that they would have to race down a path leading to the shore of Lake Arenal, where, having first located a map, they would then jump into one of eight waiting canoes. Their destination? The ominously-named Snake Island (Ed. Note: For the record, not a real place in Costa Rica). Derek and Jess pushed off first, while at the other end of a very short spectrum, Ben and Brandee couldn’t even find the gol’dern map. Hitherto happy loving couple Samantha and Mike ran – er, paddled into (for the first time in three episodes) choppy seas, when Mike, being of the XX chromosome variety, insisted on rowing to the right when everybody else was rowing – correctly, I might add – to the left. It was like watching a guy refuse to ask for directions – for fear that it would impugn his masculinity – while driving the family Winnebago off a cliff. Samantha managed in the end to get all their oars in a row but not without losing a little faith in his stewardship of both the canoe and their budding romance. Mike, however, wasn’t the only man in hot water in the lake. Adam, who’d spirited Heather away from Miles in last week’s Couples’ Choice Ceremony, just couldn’t get a handle on the subtleties of rowing, thus sacrificing precious brownie points with the aforementioned Heather.
Jessica and a frightened Derek on Costa Rica's Hanging Bridges
And, then there were nine – nine couples, that is, what with Dawn and Jared having been eliminated last week. This week, the newly-minted – and not-so newly minted – couples were informed by affable Scotsman Darren McMullen that they’d have to circumnavigate a slew of bridges slung perilously across gorges, chasms and voids – and even a bat cave for good measure – in pursuit of six so called tethers. Said tethers were not only charged with “symbolic” significance, but also tested the couples’ ability to work in tandem so as to avoid certain death in that they literally connected boy to girl like an umbilical. Like last week, the winning couple would get a night’s luxe accommodation at some place called The Oasis and, as an added bonus, the next day, a scenic helicopter ride and romantically situated lunch for two with an outstanding view of the majestic and still quite lively Volcan Arenal.
On last night’s premier episode of the new NBC reality series, Love In The Wild, we got to meet the twenty contestants for the first time as they stood nervously in a leafy grove in the middle of the jungle in Arenal. In brief video segments, we learned that basically they had all embarked on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure to find true love, having apparently run out of legitimate opportunities in the concrete jungle back home. At the young ladies’ choosing, they then all paired off and set out on their first, so-called adventure together – essentially an obstacle course – during which they raced to bring samples of air, earth and water back to the show’s genial host, young Scotsman Darren McMullen, waiting sweatily at the finish line.
Hi.
Hello there.
My name is Nick Silver. (In some, slightly grittier, parts of this big blue-green ball we call La Tierra, I’m also known as Dirk Shank, but that’s a story for another time, another place, a fatter paycheck.) By way of introduction, I have been tasked with the awesome responsibility of blogging, for the benefit of Tico Times readers far and wide (those high and low are welcome to read along as well) on a new reality series called “Love In The Wild” premiering tonight at ten on the peacock network, otherwise known as the National Broadcasting Company – NBC for short.
I’m an expat. Living in Costa Rica, who, after years of high art preening, has finally come to appreciate the true meaning of TV, i.e., that it works best as a kind of sedative., preferably one administered by a busty nurse. Nothing outside of prescription medicine (prescription medicine in Costa Rica – perish the thought!) quite takes the edge off like a couple of hours in front of the ol’ flat screen. In my case, I’ve so come to appreciate – and depend, really – on this aspect of TV that I’ve sworn off Lexipro for good. Valium, too. OK, so I got a death grip on the Prozac. Go ahead and sue me. As for my shrink, that kook Dr. Vargas – well, he can take a hike in the proverbial cloud forest, too, for all I care!
As to the critical question of ‘why now?’ – well, the show is premiering tonight for one thing. Plus, there’s no time like the present; I remember somebody telling me that a long time ago.
Why this show? Good question. Well, it’s elementary, my dear Watson. (Insert yawn here.) It just so happens the show is set in Costa Rica, our collective home away from home, hence you’re supposed to care. Don’t worry, though: it ain’t another iteration of the CSI franchise, this time set in the crummy streets of San Jose. No, no. Instead, it’s a charming lark among the camera-ready flora and fauna of Costa Rica – ergo the title, by which is meant – or so I gleaned from very briefly glancing at the show’s website – photogenic locales like Volcan Arenal, The Blue River, and Tommy’s Bait and Switch on Isla Coco.
Apparently, the dealio is as follows: 10 fetching adult girls and 10 strapping adult boys – 20 homo sapiens in all – have been flown in from The States to see if they can’t make a love connection while testing their mental and emotional intelligence in the leafy and humid environs of prime Costa Rican jungle. Dunno ‘bout you, but to me it sounds like a reanimated Frankenstein’s monster made up of bits of Survivor, Temptation Island, Get Me Out Of Here – I’m A Celebrity, and The Bachelor. Then, of course, every week – ah, you know the drill by know – the castaways are winnowed by a factor of two until, at the very end, by means of a series of diabolical competitions, the canny producers at NBC will hope to have produced a modern day version of Tarzan and Jane., minus the chimp. (Of course, Tarzan and Jane will announce their separation soon after the wrap party.)
Sadly, I have some bad news to impart. If, like me, you were hoping to see the one and only Chuck Woolery hosting in a loin cloth, it pains me deeply to inform you that instead we have to countenance yet another British interloper as MC. This time it goes by the name of Darren McMullen, a Scot by way of Australia, who, at least based on his online vlogs, will be a genial and sometimes cheeky host in the manner American audiences might associate with Craig Ferguson. China overrunning American manufacturing is one thing, but the British invasion of American media must stop at once, I say! Enough with the Pierses and the Simons and now the Darrens. I can’t take it anymore!
Anyway, I’m gonna be turning on and tuning in to NBC tonight at 8 – that is, as long as power doesn’t go off – and trading in my meds for a piping hot bag of Jack’s microwave popcorn – that is, as long as the power doesn’t go off – while the premiere episode of “Love In The Wild” unfolds before my bloodshot eyes. Why don’t you join me? Loosen the ties on your straitjacket and sit a spell. Trust me, you’ll feel better.
A National Treasure: Costa Rica’s National Stadium is the first modern sport and event arena to be built in Central America. The stadium, built at a cost of $100 million, was a gift from the Chinese government. Inauguration festivities kicked off Saturday with a friendly soccer match between China and Costa Rica. Read the full story….
Opening ceremony fireworks surround the new National Stadium - center
Inauguration events for the new National Stadium in La Sabana Park kicked off March 26 with an official ceremony, and will be followed by almost two weeks of concerts, soccer matches and other events. Read the full story…
An up-and-down Limón Carnaval 2010 came to a close last Sunday. And if there´s one mainstay from each year´s carnival – it has to be the dancing. At this year´s crowning of the Carnaval Queen, on a night marred by technical difficulties and even a fight, the dancing seen throughout the show seemed to be the biggest crowd pleasers.
Yendry López, 16, was named this year’s Queen, and her winning performance was sparked by a lively dance number by the teenager. Below are three more groovy acts by Limón dance groups that boogied on stage during the pageant. The performances featured are an all-male rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” a Michael Jackson impersonator and belly dancing.
Single Ladies:
Michael Jackson impersonator:
Belly dancers:
They leap, flip and twist across the floor. Capoeira dancers are a thrill to watch because of their high energy, impressive rhythm and astounding dance moves – and a few groups perform in downtown San José. Capoeira is a Afro-Brazilian traditional dance that combines combat moves with tribal music into a frantic dance yet restrained dance.
In the September 10 edition of The Tico Times, a story ran on the Capoeira groups performing throughout Costa Rica. In order to improve their dance and musical talents, local capoeiristas practice three or four times a week. The Tico Times attended a practice in Guadalupe, San Pedro for the group Capoeira Heranca Angola. Check out the images and videos below to see the way these performers hone their dance skills. (Photos by Ronald Reyes / Videos by Matt Levin)
Capoeira combines martial arts (although contact is never [intentionally] made) with song and dance. The performance art was started in Brazil by African slaves centuries ago. Capoeristas use four traditional instruments: the atabaque (a large drum), the berimbau (a large bow, played by striking a metal string on the bow), the pandeiro (a tambourine) and the a-go-go (small metal bells that are struck by a wooden stick). The Angola grooves to their own beats in the video below:
The first hour of each Angola practice is dedicated to music. During the final two hours instructor Carlos Castillo offers a vigorous workout by teaching the capoeira dance moves, over and over and over again. Capoeira Heranca Angola will host its next roda (the term for an authentic capoeira show) next Thursday, September 16, in Parque Morazón at 6 p.m.
And for some incredible feats of acrobatics and athleticism watch this performance by professional group Dance Brazil.
Feel up to the challenge of capoeira? For those interested in joining Capoeira Angola, contact info is listed below:
Tel: 8834-8858 / 8846-6848 / 8853-7491
E-mail: capoeira.heranca.angola@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/capoeira.heranca.angola
The showcase of the annual Limon Roots 2010 festival begins tomorrow (Aug. 31) with a gala parade through the streets of Limón on the Caribbean coast.
Two Afro-Caribbean staples of these festivities will be Calypso music and reggae songs. At a recent press conference, these musical performances were previewed. Take a look at what’s in store.
Calypso trio Yes a Man sang a classic number called “Matilda.”
Costa Rican reggae star Michael Livingston performed his own song.
Costa Rica’s Black Culture day is celebrated every year on the last day of August.
For a complete schedule of the festivities check out: http://limonroots.net/html/english/editorial.htm
Milton Rosales, of Toshi-Refs, declares a winner in a Mixed Martial Arts fight in Panama.
In May, The Tico Times wrote an article about the rise of mixed martial arts (MMA) in Costa Rica (TT, May 14). MMA is a sport that uses multiple fighting disciplines – kickboxing, muay thai, Kyokushin karate, wrestling and Brazilian jujitsu – in a full-contact combat sport. To make sure every fight is a fair fight, Milton Rosales started his own Costa Rican refereeing association. The Tico Times recently discussed with Rosales, how his organization – Toshi-Respected Fighting Supervisors (Toshi-REFS) – keeps fighters following the rules, from not holding shorts to illegally slugging someone in the face.
How did Toshi-REFS get started?
At that same time (when MMA arrived in Costa Rica five years ago), I decided to establish the first sports refereeing association here in Costa Rica, which is called Toshi-REFS. And I pretty much gathered say like 10 or 11 staff members who had experience in the martial arts and competition area. And we formed the association to provide precisely a formal service for those MMA events.
How does Toshi-REFS help protect the fighters?
There has to be somebody that can provide protection to the athletes, protection to those fighters because if there are no rules to be applied then pretty much it’s just going to be a massacre in the ring or the cage. Definitely bringing the rules to the sport has provided protection, has regulated it in a way, a little bit more.
Have you been accidentally hit in fights?
In kickboxing, you get hit every now and then. You’re close to the fighters. You’ve got to follow the action. I remember in a kickboxing fight a guy throwing a back fist and I was kind of close. And he hit me on the side of my head. Pretty much nothing happened but it’s part of the exposure you have being so close to the fights.
What dangers do you have to worry about the most in a fight?
Usually the newcomers — because of the adrenaline or maybe it’s their first fight or in the heat of the moment — maybe they sometimes, the adrenaline is pumping through, they might lose track of what they’re doing. If it’s MMA Amateur, when we’re refereeing those types of fights, once they go to the ground they’re not supposed to hit the head. There’s no ground and pound. Sometimes they might throw a punch because of the inexperience of the moment, maybe they impact a fighter. Not unintentionally. But it could happen, and it has happened. We’ve seen that. Kicking somebody in the head. Kneeing somebody in the head. Using elbows. It’s all a matter of the referee’s perception, of how the action is taking place at the moment. And if (a fighter) needs to be verbally warned, have a point deducted or directly disqualified.
How do the fighters react to the refs during a fight?
Pretty much you’re going to always have somebody saying something at you, cursing at you, or blaming it on you. So it’s part of the sport I guess. You learn how to just listen and internally take it maybe. And once the fight is over, analyze it. That’s why you have a team working with you.
Has the organization grown with the rest of MMA in the country?
It’s been a constant growth for the last five years. Thank God many, many doors have opened, and we learned from those that have been closed. We just recently had our first international fight. We went to referee an event called Ultimate Combat Challenge in Panama. We took a team of five to work the whole event. We had 10 international fights. So definitely we’re (growing).
For more info toshirefs@gmail.com or (506) 8372-0218. See more photos at the Toshi-REFS facebook page.
-Matt Levin
Matt Levin | Tico Times
This week’s Tico Times took a look at the growth of animation digital in Costa Rica. While no Pixar-esque movies are on the horizon, these local animation studios know their stuff. Take a look at the intro to Morpho Animation Studio’s “Grandpa’s Robot.” The studio plans to pitch this TV show to U.S. audiences within the year.
Here are some more high-quality Costa Rican-made cartoons.
Singing cacti in Two and a Half Plants by Space Dog Studio:
Watch some popcorn pop in this Marte Studio ad:
An intense soccer ad by Quinema Animation:
Matt Levin | Tico Times
In the latest issue of The Tico Times, the Weekend section’s lead story takes a look at mixed martial arts (MMA) classes in Costa Rica. The sport has grown in popularity since it was first introduced to Central America three years ago. Many classes at local academies are filled to capacity. Take a look at one of these vigorous fitness classes in our MMA video report.
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