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Good Evening from Costa Rica
Costa Rica opened its El Salvador-style prison Wednesday, and by Friday President Laura Fernández was touring the original. The CACCO can hold about 5,100 inmates, the country’s prisons already hold a record 21,173 people, and the first transfers are due before the end of the month unless a court challenge gets in the way.
In Guanacaste, police named a 22-year-old woman as the main suspect in the killing of an American man in his Playas del Coco condo, and she is still at large. And if you live on dollars, the week wasn’t kind: the dollar slid back toward ₡450, rents are rising almost 10 times faster than inflation, and tourist arrivals fell for a second straight month.
Also this week: El Niño is heading for a December peak with record ocean heat, Tampa has its first nonstop to San José in more than 25 years, Snoop Dogg’s December show is off, and researchers returned nearly 1 million coral embryos to a Caribbean reef in a national first.
This Week By the Numbers
21,173 — adults in Costa Rica’s prisons on Oct. 7, a record, as a 5,100-bed prison opens
3.27% — rise in housing rents over the 12 months through September, against 0.34% inflation
2.4% — drop in international visitors in September, the second monthly decline in a row
3.7 C (6.7 F) — how far above normal the WMO expects Pacific waters to run from October to December, a record
6,800 — licensed taxi drivers still registered, out of 13,500 concessions
25+ — years Tampa went without a nonstop flight to Costa Rica, until Breeze
The Top Story
The CACCO sits inside the La Reforma prison complex in San Rafael de Alajuela. (Casa Presidencial)
President Laura Fernández opened the High Containment Center Against Organized Crime (CACCO) on Wednesday at the La Reforma complex in San Rafael de Alajuela, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from San José. Built for about $33 million from plans donated by El Salvador, it can hold about 5,100 inmates in five modules, with cells for 60 people fitted with triple bunks. No one moved in on opening day. Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar says transfers start at the end of October, beginning with inmates already under high containment, and the prison should be full by December.
Life inside will be strict. Inmates wear orange uniforms with no pockets, and according to a constitutional challenge filed against the high-containment rules, they get one 10-minute phone call a week, no radio or TV, and intimate visits once every two months. Children can see a parent only by video call. Separately, a prisoners’ rights group has asked the Constitutional Chamber to stop transfers over concerns about heat, staffing and housing rival gangs together. The court has reportedly taken up the case, but no order halting transfers has been confirmed.
It’s also a political fight. At the opening, Fernández accused magistrates, prosecutors and judges of siding with criminals, and the magistrates she invited stayed away. On Friday she toured CECOT, the Salvadoran prison built for up to 40,000 inmates that CACCO is based on, and the two governments signed an agreement against organized crime whose details haven’t been released.
Washington is paying attention. The U.S. Embassy congratulated Fernández on the opening and called Costa Rica a key partner, the same day Costa Rica extradited three Mexican men wanted on cocaine charges in Wisconsin. None has been convicted. In a Fox News interview, Fernández also said U.S. agencies, including the DEA and FBI, already operate on Costa Rican soil under existing agreements, though she didn’t say how large those operations are.
More News
Playas del Coco, in Guanacaste’s Sardinal district. (Alejandro Zúñiga / The Tico Times)
Judicial police (OIJ) have named a 22-year-old woman with the last name Ortiz as the main suspect in the killing of Marc Walter Fleming, a U.S. citizen from California, in his sixth-floor condo in Playas del Coco on Sept. 27. Agents went to her home in Desamparados, south of San José, but didn’t find her, and she remains at large.
Hours earlier, agents detained a second woman, last name Zeledón, who investigators suspect drove Ortiz to San José and to an ATM and businesses where Fleming’s bank cards were used. Neither woman has been charged.
Fleming had bought the apartment in March. If you recognize Ortiz or know where she is, call the OIJ’s confidential line at 800-8000-645.
The dollar is back near where it traded in mid-July.
The dollar’s short rally is over. It closed Friday, Oct. 9, at ₡452.92 on Monex, the Central Bank’s wholesale market, down ₡5.70 in a week and well off its Oct. 1 high of ₡460.45.
If you convert $2,000 a month, that Monex rate gets you about ₡905,840, roughly ₡15,060 less than at the Oct. 1 peak. At the bank it’s worse: banks were paying at least ₡440 per dollar, which puts the same $2,000 closer to ₡880,000. More dollars keep coming into the banks than people want to buy, and that surplus is what’s holding the price down.
Prices are creeping up at the same time. Inflation turned positive in September for the first time since April 2025, at 0.34% over 12 months, with eggs and rents among the items going up.
More than 361,000 homes in Costa Rica are rented.
Housing rents rose 3.27% in the 12 months through September, almost 10 times the 0.34% inflation rate. If you’re partway through a lease, though, the law limits how much of that reaches you.
If your rent is in colones, your landlord can raise it once a year, on the lease anniversary, by no more than the past 12 months of inflation. Right now that’s 0.34%, or about ₡1,020 on a ₡300,000 rent. If your rent is in dollars, it can’t go up at all during the contract unless you both agree in writing.
The real hit comes at renewal, when market prices apply. Leases run at least three years, and if yours has no automatic renewal clause, your landlord must tell you the new rent in writing at least three months before it ends. Compare it with similar listings nearby before you sign.
Arrivals for the year are still running ahead of 2025. (Léo Coulongeat / Hans Lucas via AFP)
Costa Rica received 118,888 international visitors in September, 2.4% fewer than a year earlier and the second monthly drop in a row. U.S. arrivals, the biggest market, fell 3.3% to 55,207. The two main airports went in opposite directions: Juan Santamaría near San José handled 5.4% fewer visitors, while Liberia’s Daniel Oduber was up 11.8%. Canadian arrivals rose 18.9%.
The Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) blamed geopolitical conflicts, weak economies in its main markets and a post-World Cup effect. The year is still ahead, with 2,310,320 arrivals through September, up 4.8%. The strong colón is the other squeeze, since every dollar a hotel or tour operator earns now covers fewer local wages and bills. High season, starting in December, will show whether this is a pause or a longer slowdown.
Drought in neighboring Nicaragua in 2014. (Diana Ulloa / AFP, file photo)
El Niño hasn’t peaked yet. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) expects it to keep strengthening until about December, with Pacific waters forecast to average 3.7 C (6.7 F) above normal from October to December. That would be the highest on record, well above the 2.6 C (4.7 F) set in 2015–16, and the WMO puts the odds of it lasting through February at near 100%.
What it means here is an early end to the rains. The National Meteorological Institute (IMN) forecasts below-normal rainfall across much of the country from Oct. 19 to Nov. 15, with very dry conditions in the North Pacific, Central Pacific and Central Valley from Oct. 26. UNA climatologist Ricardo Orozco expects much of the country to be in full dry season by mid-November.
Recent showers haven’t made up the shortfall. The Pacific regions and the Central Valley remain under meteorological drought, and community water boards reported rationing in 74 communities in Guanacaste, Puntarenas and Alajuela in September. If you live in those areas, keep some water stored.
Quick Hits
Tampa has its first nonstop to Costa Rica in over 25 years. Breeze Airways flies Wednesdays and Saturdays, leaving Tampa at 6:40 a.m. and landing at Juan Santamaría at 7:55 a.m. local time, a little over three hours. Introductory one-way fares started at $129, but checked bags and seat selection cost extra.
Your Android phone may soon warn you before a quake. Google is expanding its earthquake alert system to more than 200 countries, and Costa Rica was reported on the updated coverage list. Google hasn’t confirmed it or said when alerts will switch on here, and phones here still showed the feature as unavailable.
ICE sent two Costa Rican children to a Texas family detention center. U.S. records show a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old were picked up near New Orleans at the end of July and driven about 900 kilometers (560 miles) to Dilley, Texas. The records don’t say whether a parent was with them.
Your 2027 marchamo will cost a bit more. Mandatory insurance for private cars rises 5.43% to ₡31,881, and motorcycles go up 4.5% to ₡104,110, as traffic accidents and injuries climb. Taxis and light commercial vehicles get a cut.
Costa Rica’s licensed taxi fleet has shrunk by nearly half. About 6,800 red-taxi drivers remain registered out of 13,500 concessions, industry groups say, as Uber and DiDi have grown. Since Sept. 29 you can also book some red taxis through the Uber app.
Snoop Dogg’s Dec. 3 show is canceled, and refunds will be automatic. The promoter hasn’t said when they’ll arrive. Beéle’s Parque Viva concert was also called off less than a day before Saturday’s show after its permit was denied. Both promoters are among the suspects in a money laundering probe, and neither has been convicted.
The rare parasite named for Costa Rica. A longtime resident recalls weeks of wrong diagnoses before emergency surgery for Angiostrongylus costaricensis, a parasite first described by Costa Rican scientists that reaches people through slugs on unwashed produce. Wash raw fruit and vegetables well.
Spotlight
Breeding corals mixes genes from different parents, which may help reefs cope with warmer water.
For the first time in Costa Rica, researchers have raised coral larvae in a lab and sent them back to the sea. Raising Coral Costa Rica and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography set up a temporary lab at the Gandoca-Manzanillo refuge, and after the corals spawned on Sept. 3 and 4, they returned nearly 1 million fertilized embryos to the Manzanillo reef.
The species included elkhorn coral, which is critically endangered. Hundreds of the lab-raised larvae settled into young polyps and went to Manzanillo’s coral nursery. Most reef restoration cuts fragments from existing corals, which produces clones. Breeding them instead mixes genes from different parents, and that diversity may help new corals survive disease and warmer seas.
Manzanillo residents, dive instructors, boat captains and local schoolchildren all pitched in. The project runs for two more spawning seasons.
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