by Rod Hughes
You remember when we said that the Guanacaste soccer team from Nicoya had a leg up on winning the Second Division and a chance to get back up to playing with the big boys in the First Division by virtue of their 2-0 shutout of the University of Costa Rica 11?
Well, they slipped!
UCR is the new entry into the First Division, replacing the boys from Liberia, another Guanacaste team that racked up a dismal record last season, losing all its home games. Guanacaste lost in miserable weather (like the first game of the finals) by a score of 3-0.
Not that Guanacaste was miserable on the field or at least not until the agony of defeat set in after the final whistle. For UCR, the victory was totally sweet–they are returning to the First Divsion after an absence of 31 years! And many near misses when they were left holding the bride’s bouquet…
Scoring could have been earlier had the goalkeepers been less adept. For example, UCR’s William Solís centered the ball infront of Guanacaste’s goal and it hit Jean Carlos Cardenas on the sleeve, causing a penalty. Alonso Hilarión kicked a hard one but Guanacaste goalie Wagner Hernandez managed to deflect it. Not long after UCR goalkeeper Osvaldo Quesada robbed Guanacaste’s Carlos Rodríguez of a goal.
But that was the last of Guanacaste’s near-glory. From there, the game turned into a comedy of errors. At minute 29, Hilarión passed the ball to Kareem Mclean whose header made it 1-0. With only three minutes to go in the first half, an unfortunate self-inflicted goal by Sebastián Cartagena made it 2-0 and the finals were tied.
The second half had barely begun when a torrential rain reminiscent of the game in Nicoya hit, turning the field into a giant mud pie. This should have benefited the boys from Nicoya who had won the game before under just such soggy conditions, but the trio of Mullins, Hilarión and Berny Scott wore away at the morale of Guanacaste with stirling play. And at minute 50, the roof fell in with UCR’s midfielder Luis Carrera booting in the pass to the First Division.
In lauding UCR’s deserved win, Guanacaste coach Jorge Briceño told the daily La Nación, “…They bested us in attitude and experience.”

by Rod Hughes
Acosta, a scenic mountainous region south of the capital populated by small farmers, provides much of the produce in the metropolitan farmers’ markets. Although its citrus fruits, bananas and plantains are of high quality, it is not particularly famous even in Costa Rica and certainly not for gourmet coffee, pretty much the domain of the Tarrazú coffee from the Los Santos region of the country. That low profile may change as a result of last week’s international judging of 80 groups of Costa Rican coffee producers.
This Cinderella region won the “Cup of Excellence” award in a competition organized by the international institute bearing that name and the Association of Fine Coffee of Costa Rica, enchanting tasting experts from the United States, Norway, Germany, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Britain, Japan, Canada, Taiwan and Costa Rica. The samples submitted by Acosta’s Association of Agricultural Producers of Acosta and Aserrí garnered 92.42 points out of a hundred, edging out Cafetelera Los Nacientes of San Ramon with 91.37. Competition was tough and the lowest of the 80 still earned 84.05. But only four of the 25 finalists got over 90.
Competition samples were submitted by the association that was formed in 1998 to save the small farmers of the area whose crops had been devastated by Hurricane Mitch in October of that year. Costa Rica did not receive the brunt of the storm but, as happens when a tropical disturbance passes close to the Caribbean coast, moist Pacific air was sucked into the country by low pressure in the Atlantic, dumping torrential rains. What the association did was to revive the area and encourage the ruined farmers to diversify, planting citrus trees, timber and other crops in association with coffee. Along with that, a small coffee micro-processing plant.
The coffee farmers are excited now, not only by their win but by their first exports ever. Two weeks ago, containers of coffee beans were shipped to Germany and to Italy.

by Rod Hughes
The daily La Nacion today reported more bad news about the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) but it was not as bad as it might have been. The bad: The new, three-month-old Cariblanca hydroelectric generation plant at Sarapiquí is out of operation indefinitely, only 19 days after President Oscar Arias inaugurated it.
But the bright spot is that ICE spokespersons say that the latest in a dismal series of breakdowns for ICE, the principal electricity supplier for the country, will not result in a repetition of the regional blackouts that affected business, industry and home users in April. Moreover, ICE director Teofilo de la Torre says contractually it is the responsibility of the Croatian-Slavic firm that installed it, Koncar Litostrof, to put Cariblanco back on line.
But the breakdown in the ventilation system of one of the generators may mean that ICE will have to resort to more thermal plant generation, meaning more cost in hydrocarbon fuels. ICE assistant manager Carlos Obregón told La Nación that is “probable” but by no means certain and depends on the water levels at other hydroelectric generators in the country. Despite recent heavy rains, the levels have had little time to recuperate from an extra-long and unusually parched dry season.
Current national demand for energy is estimated at 1,300 megawatts of which 92 is hydrocarbon fuel generated.
(See recent article on this newsfeed regarding the incredible series of generator failures that led up to the April 18 nationwide outage and the rationing that followed.)