Cuba & Costa Rica Blog
About this blog
Written by Cuba and Costa Rica expert Christopher P. Baker, this blog will update readers on life in these two diverse and exciting countries.
Recent Posts
- Last blog post on Costa Rica and Cuba
- First-ever group motorcycle tours of Cuba successful
- Cuba’s Mariel port readying for Panama Canal expansion
- Musings on wildlife encounters on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula
- Cuba’s Steam Trains puffing their last gasp
- My top five thrilling activities in Costa Rica
- Cuba’s fun February festivals include Harleys, Books, Cigars
- Five top volcano viewing experiences in Costa Rica
- New road along Costa Rica / Nicaraguan border mired
- Cuba’s Hotel Campoamor at Cojímar to be restored?
- Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez honored in new book
- Christmas challenge for Costa Rica’s sexually abused girls
- Costa Rica opens Chinatown in downtown San José
- David Soul films Hemingway’s car restoration in Cuba
- National Geographic Expeditions receives license for Cuba tours
New road along Costa Rica / Nicaraguan border mired
Two years ago when I visited Los Chiles, a remote end-of-the-paved-road town near the Nicaraguan border, I pushed on for the frontier along a skunk of a dirt road that deposited me by a padlocked gate and a vacant Immigration/Customs post.
Word was that the road was soon going to be paved and a border post opened. (Currently the only passage is by road at La Cruz, or by river from Los Chiles.)
My visit coincided with a border flare-up between the two nations when, in October 2010, Nicaraguan troops occupied Costa Rica’s Isla Calero, on the Río San Juan, claiming it as their own. more >>
Cuba’s Hotel Campoamor at Cojímar to be restored?
Visitors to Cojímar—the fishing village outside Havana where novelist Ernest Hemingway berthed his sport-fishing vessel, Pilar—invariably are struck by the imposing, near-derelict, four-story pink-stone structure that commands the heights overlooking the bay.
“What’s that?” my tour guests always ask as we pass the once grandiose Republican building.
That is—or once was—the Hotel Campoamor. more >>
Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez honored in new book
Everybody knows Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the two foremost leaders of the Cuban Revolution that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Some of you may even know of other key figures in the revolutionary pantheon, such as Camilo Cienfuegos, Frank País, and Abel Santamaría. more >>
Christmas challenge for Costa Rica’s sexually abused girls
In my March 23, 2009 blog post about Costa Rica I wrote about Casa Luz, a remarkable program that offers a new life for young mothers who have been physically abused and are at high social risk.
As I wrote back then: “Many of the girls at Casa Luz became mothers at 12 or 13 years of age. Some were impregnated by their own fathers or family members. Lacking in self-esteem, most of these exploited child-mothers had been relegated to a hopeless life of drugs and sex on the street.”
It's a heart-rending story with a happy ending for most of the young girls fortunate to enter Casa Luz. But not all. more >>
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