While Ellen toils this week in Toronto I'm in Latin America, a guest of the Costa Rica Tourist Board. Three American journalists and I were invited to do a familiarization trip focusing on extreme sports. I could have written about what it's like to rappel down a seventeen metre waterfall, get tossed out of an inner tube in class IV rapids, or whitewater raft down the treacherous Pacuare River. Instead though, today's lesson will focus on flora and fa...

"Do you think that maybe we do live at the centre of the universe?" I asked Ellen, not expecting an answer. No matter where our travels take us, at least once during every trip we come across people who simply don't like us. And it's not the dreaded Communist Chinese, the non-Christian Moroccans or the impoverished Nicaraguans who hate us so. It's the friendly, peace-loving folks from the Great White North - the Canadians. Last week a young Vancouver ...

  Tourism has been good for some small business' in Costa Rica. It's the only place in Latin America where you can get a $3.00 meal for eight bucks. And not surprisingly, because of this, the free-spending northerners have unwittingly created a thriving new enterprise - theft. According to the English-language Tico Times, robberies, which I take to include petty theft, have increased by 700% since 1990. North American women take to the streets in dress...

 Giant hot boulders came hurtling down the face of the volcano leaving trails of smoke in their wake. At two kilometres away you can hear, seem to feel each thump. We were about as close you are allowed to get to it, at Arenal Observatory Lodge. Twice we heard the scream of what sounded like a jet engine, as the pilot leaves the docking gate and gives it that ear-piercing engine rev to clear the cobwebs before taking off - Arenal saying "welcome" or maybe "b****...

It all started in the late 1400's. The Spaniards came with their galleons and guns and disease. Upon arrival in the Americas, the Conquistadors, leaving their own women behind, must have thought they'd landed in heaven. The males were bludgeoned or more likely used to build churches and then bludgeoned. The women, I expect, were given "special" breeding status.  .......................................................................................... "...