Best Coffee Shops in San Jose, Costa Rica

Costa Rica Entertainment – San Jose has three coffeeshops you need to know about.

Tour them all while passing through the capital. Along with savoring a good coffee, you will discover unique spaces that bring about a peaceful state of mind.

Cafenauta allows you to taste eight coffees from different zones. Each day one is served. Each day offers a new region, climate, soil, and benefit. It’s quite the experience in taste: sweeter, more bitter, more body or more aroma then the day before.

If you start to feel the need to escape the chaos of Central Avenue, make your way to the Steinvorth building. It’s 110 years old and declared architectural heritage. Inside is Café La Mancha. This corner cafe makes you feel like you’re on a terrace surrounded by great photography to accompany your coffee from the Los Santos area.

Cuesta de Nuñez maintains a Victorian influence. Local art is for sale in this once forgotten house. The space is complete with good music and a cold coffee, El Carmen, the house special.

Will Costa Rica Join Panama on Building a Central American Railroad?

Costa Rica News – Panama is planning to build a modern railroad to Paso Canoas and hopes that Costa Rica will get on board.

It would be ideal if all the Central American countries join the plan and take the project all the way to Mexico.

The Chinese have proposed a sort of new “Silk Road” with great ramifications for trade in technology and different sectors in our future. Because of the canal and location, Panama is part of it.

Still, if the railroad only serves marginally, that would be a shame. Will a Central American railway ever come to fruition? It’s been talked about since at least the 1980s with no luck.

At the moment it seems Costa Rica would be unable to participate due to debt and the fact that we can’t even seem to finish a road without major issues. Then there is also the question of how it would be financed among separate nations.

Costa Rican President Under Investigation for Corruption

Costa Rica News – Corruption in the government? Who is surprised?

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis is under fire after a report accused him of corruption for accelerating the legal process of Chinese cement imports in favor of businessman and Cementazo owner, Juan Carlos Bolaños.

The Special Commission trusted with monitoring state banks and transfers was alerted to various inconsistencies at the Banco de Costa Rica, or BCR, and launched a four-month investigation, publishing its final report Monday night.

According to the report, Director General of Customs Victor Morales, former Ministry of Finance Fernando Rodriguez and the Ministry of Economics were pressured by the president on at least six separate occasions to bypass normal procedure to facilitate the importation of products.

The statement implied that a series of meetings was held with the ministers, Bolaños and the president, and that Solis had been paid off by the businessman. The commission has requested the Ethics Office to review Solis’ behavior.

“It is absolutely false that the President of the Republic or the Governing Council have instructed the appointment of the General Manager of the Bank of Costa Rica, Mario Barrenechea, and there is no evidence to support it,” the president wrote on Facebook immediately after the report was published.

Later, in a video message to the media, Solis said he could state with the fullest confidence that he would never allow any act of “corruption, peddling or undue favoritism”, now or in the future.

“Let it be very clear: I have never instructed any official to violate the legal system or to intercede on behalf of a company or person in particular, whoever says otherwise lacks the truth,” Solis said Tuesday.

Bolaños is currently being held in preventative custody for his alleged role in the corruption scandal, along with the former manager of BCR and five other officials.

The judicial investigation is aimed at determining if there were crimes committed in the granting of credits for at least US$50 million to Bolaños, in which alleged irregularities have been reported.

The legislative commission also pointed out the ethical shortcomings of five deputies who allegedly aided Bolaños, and have asked for the resignation of the director of intelligence, Mariano Figueres, for his oversight in allowing the president to meet with the businessman.

From TelesurTv.net

12 Killed As Tourist Bus Crashes in Mexico

World News – CANCUN, Mexico — A bus carrying cruise ship passengers on an excursion to Mayan ruins in southeastern Mexico flipped over on a narrow highway Tuesday, killing 11 travelers and their guide and injuring about 20 others, officials said.

Seven Americans and two Swedes were among the injured, said Vicente Martin, spokesman for the Quintana Roo state Civil Defense agency. Authorities had not yet established the nationalities of the dead.

The bus ended up on its side in vegetation along the two-lane road. Video taken after the crash showed some survivors lying on the pavement and others walking around. One body lay on the roadside covered by a white sheet or other object, as the crash scene was cordoned off with yellow police tape.

Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises said in a statement that passengers from two of its ships, the Celebrity Equinox and Serenade of the Seas, were on the bus. The company expressed its sympathies and said it was assisting with medical care and transportation.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico said U.S. officials were working with local authorities to determine whether American citizens were among the dead.

Martin said investigators were working to determine the cause of the crash, which occurred as the bus was on its way to the ruins at Chacchoben, about 110 miles south of Tulum.

The Quintana Roo state prosecutor’s office reported that the fatalities were 11 tourists, including one child, and a Mexican tour guide.

It said in a statement Tuesday night that seven injured tourists had returned to their boat while 13 remained hospitalized, six of them in Tulum and seven in the city of Chetumal, near the Belize border.

The dead were being transferred to the forensics service for identification and subsequent notification of consular authorities.

Chris Brawley, a passenger on the Serenade of Seas, was on a bus headed to the same Mayan ruins when they came on the scene minutes after the accident.

It was shortly after 9 a.m. and a convoy of buses from the cruise port at Mahahual was headed to Chacchoben, he said. They had been on the road for about 35 to 40 minutes before the accident.

Brawly said the sky was clear and the road was dry and he didn’t see any sign of another vehicle being involved in the crash, which happened on a narrow, two-lane road with no shoulder or guardrail.

He said he did not see the crash, but “the bus clearly lost control somehow as there were swerve marks all over the road surface.”

Brawley, of Haslet, Texas, said his ship departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Friday for a seven-day cruise. They were in Roatan, Honduras, on Monday and were scheduled to be in Cozumel on Wednesday.

Michael Schuenemeyer, a minister from Cleveland, was on another bus that passed the crash about an hour later.

Tow trucks were lifting up the bus when they passed by, he said. “It was in pretty sad shape,” Schuenemeyer said.

Costa Maya Mahahual, the bus company involved, said in a statement that in addition to the tourists, a guide and driver were aboard the bus.

by ASSOCIATED PRESS

What Happens to You After You Die? The Afterlife Explained

Ghosts & The Supernatural – Most people want to know what happens after you die. I have the answers. Let’s say, the information is from a special source.
YOUR COMPLETE LIFE IS SHOWN TO YOU WHEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE
The moment of death, some people talk about seeing their life flash in front of their eyes. This is possible, because your brain generates energy and everything you experience, smell, touch, see, think and the knowledge you gain is recorded in this energy. When the right trigger comes along, that trigger being the closeness of death, you are shown your whole life. The angelic beings that will be your judges, will also see your life accomplishments and failures. Your good deeds and your bad deeds. This will be the time of your judgment.

PARADISE DIMENSION: GOING INTO THE LIGHT
If you accomplished good deeds, you will either see a light portal that will take you to the other side, or you will experience going into the light, a tunnel that will take you to what looks like the gates of heaven. This is another dimensional realm and you will think of it as paradise.

PUNISHMENT DIMENSION: A TYPE OF HELL OR A TEMPORARY HELL
If you accomplished bad deeds, shadow creatures will pull you down and you will be punished with severe pain. You will feel the ripping of your skin, you will feel hunger, you will feel a variety of pain and you will be tormented by strange evil looking creatures. This will last as long as the beings that judged you, will allow. After you are punished, your soul will be recycled and you will live a new life and hopefully you will have learned the valuable lessons from your previous life.

WHAT REINCARNATION REALLY IS
During the instance of death, the soul will leave your body via the forehead. Your soul, which was once your aura will float in the atmosphere. At times, when a new child is born upon the Earth, that child will take its psychic antenna and pick up on the information contained in that floating soul. As the child grows older, it will think it is the person that once possessed that soul. The child will know everything about that deceased person and will think that he or she is reincarnated, when in fact they merely downloaded the information from that soul. A child will have psychic abilities from ages 1 to 8 and most children after the age of 8, lose those psychic abilities.

IF YOU REFUSE TO GO INTO THE LIGHT
If you refuse to go into the light after you die, you have that option. The next thing that occurs is the “ghost police” or perhaps angelic beings will place an energy grid around the area that you are haunting and you cannot go past that energy grid, until you are ready to go into the light. The only way you can get past the energy grid is if you have something you possessed while you were living placed in another location. That location could be another country, another state or another city. You will have the power to teleport from the place you are haunting to the place that has the object that you once possessed while you were alive. That object contains your energy within its molecules. As a living being, you can deposit your energy on many objects and after death, you will be able to teleport to any place those objects may reside.

RECYCLED SOULS
Some souls are recycled. You are placed in a waiting dimension and higher beings will decide if you become recycled and if so, you are placed into a person that is being born upon the Earth or another world or another dimension. Your memories of your past life are suppressed and the only memories you will have are of your new life. Recycled souls do not experience reincarnation.

BECOMING PART OF THE GRID
You have a job in the afterlife, you become part of a huge energy grid. This grid gathers universal knowledge that becomes part of the Akashic Records. You will experience being part of that energy grid. You are like a cell that is part of a bigger picture. The energy grid in its entirety could possibly be a universal god that has the complete knowledge of the universe. The souls that are part of the energy grid, will be able at times participate in the Paradise Dimension. The Paradise Dimension is more or less a place for relaxation and recreation.

Paul Dale Roberts, HPI Esoteric Detective
aka The Demon Warrior
Halo Paranormal Investigations (HPI International)
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/HPIinternational/

The Infinite Frontier

What is our place in the universe as human beings? Can we find it by amassing knowledge and searching outwardly, or can we only find out by going within?

Technologists believe some friendly ET will tell us, or science will discover and communicate with life on other planets. But how can humans only join the ranks of intelligent species when we remain unintelligent ourselves?

These are no longer abstract philosophical and spiritual questions, but an increasingly urgent and practical inquiry, requiring enduring insight to light the way ahead through the Stygian darkness that man has made.

Human consciousness, as we’ve known it for tens of thousands of years, is becoming saturated with darkness. In some cultures, such as America’s globalizing culture, it already has reached the saturation point.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t good people. Many small but significant acts of spontaneous kindness make a difference in people’s daily lives. But it has become imperative to be self-knowing, if only to not become a conduit for collective darkness.

We all have a darkside, whether we own it and are learning from it, or are suppressing and ignoring it and thereby growing it like fungi in a cave. What few people realize however is that darkness is not individual, but inextricably part of the totality of dark matter that is eclipsing, indeed suffocating the human heart.

Only goodness is truly individual. Darkness and evil are always essentially the same, and boring as hell, literally.

Cosmologists now refer to “dark matter.” Though they don’t know what it’s made of and have not been able to observe it, they say it comprises a greater portion of the universe than all the matter and energy we know. In short, it’s a mathematical hypothesis for something they are admittedly ignorant about.

The dark matter in human consciousness on the other hand is all too well known. It is an ever-increasing phenomenon, and in our age it has become synonymous with human consciousness.

The darkness in consciousness can be observed. And in correctly observing it within (without separation, judgment or analysis), it is transformed. Which is to say, we are transformed, and a new order of consciousness begins to emerge.

A cartoonist pens another scenario:

“If we kill ourselves off with our animal aggression or let ourselves die through callousness or greed, we will have betrayed those ancestors and countless descendants, and leave the universe blind and dumb again, unintelligible to itself. And then it’ll have to start over. Probably with the raccoons.”

This is what passes for philosophy in the mainstream media these days. Such anthropocentrism, which puts humans at the center of the universe, amounts to common narcissism.

If we kill ourselves off or let ourselves die as a species, does anyone actually believe that that will “leave the universe blind and dumb again?” Was the universe blind and dumb before man? And if humans extinguish themselves, is that it “for consciousness in this universe,” because we’re “the only game in town…as far as we know?”

The answers are contained in the questions themselves. Logically, the universe that evolved a brain with the potential for cosmic consciousness has evolved others, and is generative of consciousness. Consciousness is the warp and woof of the universe.

As far as being “the only game in town,” that’s about as provincial as it gets. If humans fail to make the transition to true consciousness, the universe will shed a tear (metaphorically speaking of course), and move on. Undoubtedly some experiments in consciousness succeed, and some fail. Homo sap is failing, but the fat lady hasn’t sung on us yet.

Clearly, darkness does not refer to the night, but to the blight in human consciousness. Turning within and owning it in ourselves, we will have no need for juvenile dreams of terraforming Mars and finding other earth-like planets for man to decimate and denude.

Order flows from the negation of thought, not the arrangement of thought. Emptiness is the ground of all being.

Transcending thought while advancing scientifically and technologically is what makes for an intelligent species in the universe.

Martin LeFevre

Costa Rican Nicole Carboni Our of Miss Florida Pageant

Costa Rica Entertainment – Nicole Carboni, the ex-candidate of Miss Costa Rica, was left out of Miss Florida.

She has parents from Costa Rica and the USA and has dual citizenship, allowing her to participate in beauty contests in both countries.

She participated in Miss Costa Rica 2015 and later took the crown at Miss Miami USA 2016. In Miss Florida, however, she competed against 200 girls and did not qualify for the top 15.

She stated that her preparation and dedication was worth it and she congratulated her new friends made in the contest on their good performances.

Puerto Rican Génesis Dávila Pérez took the crown. She won the same title last year but it was withdrawn after the directors alleged that she used personal stylists for her preparation instead of those assigned to the participants. She sued them and they paid her $3 million but did not return the crown.