128Canopy Blog

For the last thirteen years, Costa Ricans and visitors have had the opportunity to enjoy the annual Light Festival that takes place in downtown San Jose during the holiday season.  The much awaited event attracts hundreds of adults and children from around the country who get carried away by the fantasy and festive mood of the night.

This year’s Light Festival will be held on Saturday December 13th and will start at 6pm from the east side of La Sabana Metropolitan Park and will parade down the Paseo Colon and 2nd Avenue to end at the Plaza de la Democracia.

Authorities are expecting at least 1 million people to attend this year’s event who will be able to enjoy from floats to bands, cheerleading squads, street performers and much more.

The Municipality of San Jose has already begun cleaning up the area and putting up green, blue and red Christmas lights on over 52 trees as well as on both pedestrian bridges in the Paseo Colon.

As it has been traditionally celebrated, each year the Light Festival invites the person who has stood out during the year as its marshal.  During the past years, the honor has gone to personalities such as Costa Rican-American astronaut Franklin Chang-Díaz, singer-songwriter Humberto Vargas and last year’s Special Olympics Team.

This year, the Light Festival’s marshal will be the Latin American Idol runner up Maria Jose Castillo who has expressed her excitement and gratitude towards the organization and Costa Rican people for their support.

The area known as “San Jose’s Lungs” in the western part of town will be undergoing an 8 year project of replacing several of its exotic trees with indigenous species.   The Metropolitan Sabana Park has experienced a gradual loss of some of its trees as well as stopped attracting bird species and other native species.

The plan calls for the replacing of over 3,000 trees out of the Sabana’s 6,000 trees.  The study was lead by biologists from the Costa Rican National Institute of Biodiversity (InBio) with financing from the Scotia Bank.

The idea behind the park’s improvement is to transform the area into an urban forest with the flora and fauna of Costa Rica.  According to Scotia Bank’s General Manager, Luis Liberman, the change of the park will enhance the downtown environment as well as as provide its citizens a better quality of life.

Replacing the 3, 262 trees will be carried out gradually and will introduce 5,000 new indigenous tree species.  The tree replacement program has been designed to be completed within 8 years in order to gradually transform the area.

InBio experts have also mentioned that there are several seriously damaged trees that require immediate attention.  There are approximately 317 trees that have been damaged by different types of fungus and bacteria.  There are a few dead trees that need to be immediately removed in order to avoid accidents such as a branch falling on a person.

The Sabana’s current tree distribution is 88.2% foreign species such as evergreens and eucalyptus while only 11.5% are native species that have been planted by the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity.

Since Wednesday November 19th, Costa Rica has experienced its lowest temperature in over 10 years.  The central valley area has experienced the lowest temperatures with San Jose having a 56 F and the rest of the central valley an average of 59 F.

According to meteorologist, Rosario Alfaro, the temperature drop was caused by a cold front heading in from the northern hemisphere.  The climatic behavior has also caused precipitation to continue in Costa Rica’s Atlantic Coast.  Alfaro also stated that the cold fronts are a normal climate condition during the transition from the rainy season to the dry season.

Aside from presenting one of the lowest temperatures in the past 10 years, the current cold front has also brought along strong winds that have caused located damages in the electrical cabling.  The local electricity company, CNFL, reported over 200 issues as early in the day as 10am yesterday morning.  A spokesperson for CNFL mentioned that there were broken poles and snapped cables in areas such as San Jose de la Montaña and Coronado where winds reached a velocity of 55 miles per hour.

In Costa Rica’s Caribbean region, where the weather conditions are quite fierce, authorities were forced to set up shelters in Limon where at least 224 people are currently staying.  In the Matina area, the overflowing of the Chirripo River last Wednesday damaged the homes of over a dozen homes.

In the coastal area of Limon, a recently built US$145,000 watch tower was destroyed due to strong ocean waves.  The current weather condition is expected to continue over the weekend.