Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Lapa Rios Review | Costa Rica | Fodor's Hotel Reviews

Lapa Rios Review | Costa Rica | Fodor's Hotel Reviews: "Lapa Ríos
Member Rating: ***** 5.0 | Rate It

* Address: 20 km/12 mi south of Puerto Jiménez
* Mailing: Apdo. 100-8203, Puerto Jiménez, Costa Rica
* Phone: 735-5130
* Fax: 735-5179
* www.laparios.com

* Price range: $$$$
* Location: Cabo Matapalo

Fodor's Review:

The most spectacular eco-resort in Costa Rica, Lapa Ríos has won numerous awards for its mix of conservation and comfort. After catching your breath when you see the view from the high, breezy jungle ridge rife with wildlife, your next sharp intake may be when you see the bill. But in this case the price is not inflated. Spacious, airy cabins built of gleaming hardwoods have four-poster queen beds, up-to-date bathrooms, and showers with one screened wall open to nature. Private teak-decked garden terraces allow you to view passing monkeys and toucans from a lounge chair. There's an infinity pool, a spa, and a new yoga deck. Inspired meals, served under a soaring thatch roof, include lots of seafood, exotic local fruits and vegetables, and mouthwatering desserts. You can eat whenever—and as much as—you want. Resident naturalist guides lead tours through pristine wilderness and to nearby beaches on foot or o"

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Central & Southern Pacific

costaricaviews.com

Best Surf Points in Costa Rica


surfing-costa-rica

Source: Info Costarica

Central & Southern Pacific :

Boca Barranca : It’s a river mouth with a very long left. Paved road. Lots of places to stay. Some of the best waves in the country specially for longboards.
Playa Escondida : Its located to the south from Jacó where you can get a taxi and head to an excellent point break that form a very good left and a surfable right.
Playa Jacó : Its 2 hours away from San José. This waves tend to close out when it gets over 5 feet. Close to a great quantity of places like Playa Hermosa, Escondida, Barranca and Puntarenas. Lots of hotels, cabins, restaurants, bars and camp grounds.

Roca Loca : A rocky point next to Jacó with rights that break over submerged rocks.
Playa Hermosa : Very strong beach break. Its a long beach break but the preferred point its located in front of a large tree called “El Almendro”. The waves conditions are generally best when the tide is rising.
Playa Dominical : Good, strong beach breaks with lefts and rights. Very tropical with beautiful landscapes.
Pavones : Excellent left point, considered one of the largest in the world. Good shape and very fast.
Caribbean :

Manzanillo : A very fast beach break located 20km from Puerto Viejo. Easy to get to.
Puerto Viejo : A very thick and voluminous wave that comes from deep water to a shallow reef. Its called “Salsa” for its juice power.
Black Beach, Cahuita : Excellent beach break, not well known and therefore not crowded. You can find waves there all year round.
Playa Bonita : A point reef break. Very thick powerful and dangerous left. 50km north of Limon.

Northern Pacific :

Potrero Grande : A right point, with very feast and hollow waves. 270km from San José with no road access. You have to go to Playas del Coco or Playa Ocotal and take a boat.
Playa Naranjo : “Roca Bruja” also called “Witch’s Rock” one of the best beach breaks in the country with very strong offshore winds from December to March. Its located in the National Park Santa Rosa so a 4WD is a must.
Playa Grande : Beach Breaks located 20 min north of Tamarindo.
Playa Tamarindo : Here you can find two different points the first one is a rocky one called “Pico Pequeño” in front of the hotel Tamarindo, and “El Estaro” an excellent river mouth break.
Langosta : A right and left point break that curls off the mouth of the mouth of a small river, 1 km south of Tamarindo.
Avellanas : Good beach break, very hollow rights and lefts. 15km south of Tamarindo.
Playa Negra : A right point break with very fast waves. Restaurant and Cabins on the point.
Playa Coyote, Manzanillo and Mal Pais : Beach breaks, with very consistent lefts and rights and several points.

Monday, July 20, 2009

The ten finalists have been announced in the second annual Geotourism Challenge – the competition sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ash


Travel Answer Man - Empowering You to Travel | John Van Kirk's Travel Blog

Best of Geotourism


  • John Van Kirk, the Travel Answer Man
Meet John Van Kirk, the Travel Answer Man. Follow his journeys, experience his adventures, see

By travelanswerman | July 20, 2009

Top Ten Geotourism Finalists Unveiled

The ten finalists have been announced in the second annual Geotourism Challenge – the competition sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ashoka’s Changemakers
From now until Wednesday, Aug. 12, the public can vote online for the three finalists they consider most cutting-edge in providing visitors with authentic travel experiences. The three winners will be announced Wednesday, Sept. 9, and each will receive a $5,000 prize.
A panel of expert judges — including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine, and the founder of Lonely Planet — selected the finalists based on their innovation, social impact and sustainability/viability.
The ten finalists are:
• Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much respected public park and nature exploratory center. See geotourism.changemakers.com/fr/node/23438
• Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through non-commercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/23485)
• Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in southern Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/20613)
• Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/24143
• Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects — such as an artist apprenticeship — to benefit local residents. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21933
• RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions.geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/19044
• Trout Point Lodge, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21375
• PEPY, Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, is where on-site learning projects combine with donations to personally invest visitors in sustaining and enhancing education in Cambodia. geotourism.changemakers.com/node/21931
• Wikiloc Community Maps, created by a company in Girona, Spain, are built on information provided by visitors and hosts to offer honest and authentic impressions about destinations geotourism.changemakers.com/es/node/22687
• Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley. geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/24996
Valere Tjolle www.travelmole.com

Costa Rica Bedfinder currently represents more than 600 vacation rentals located throughout the country including popular destinations such as Conchal



Dominical, Costa Rica, July 20, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Those who have experienced vacationing in private homes and villas know the benefits of renting over staying in hotels: savings, privacy, freedom and space. However, the flipped side is that with vacation rentals what you see may not be what you get.

According to Costa Rica’s largest online vacation rental resource, Costa Rica Bedfinder, here are a few vacation rental pitfalls to avoid:

Photos - Do not fall in love with the photos and base your decision on the photos alone; a good photographer can make a tiny room appear spacious, hide a bad spot or make the neighboring houses disappear. Some condo unit owners prefer to display pictures of the model unit used for real estate sales rather than their own. In some cases, the view that you see in the picture is not a view from the property; while a picture tells a thousand words, it does not always tell the truth.

Internet - If you must have access to internet during your travel, you should confirm with your vacation rental host on internet availability and the mode of connection before you book. Costa Rica is not as widely wired as in the U.S. or Canada. Some vacation rentals may indicate internet access in the listings, but the access is through an extremely slow telephone dial-up connection, or the availability in the listings actually refers to an internet café in town.

Air Condition - Not all vacation homes that offer air conditioning are air-conditioned throughout; many, including some of the most luxurious villas, have air conditioning only in the bedrooms. And just because the property is fitted with A/C does not mean it is included in the rates. Due to electricity cost being notoriously high in Costa Rica, A/C is sometimes charged a specified extra daily or weekly price.

Taxes – Thanks to the recent annulment of the 3.39% hospitality room tax, tourist now pay just 13% sales tax on accommodation. For vacation rentals that are professionally managed by rental agencies, 13% sales tax is applicable but is not always included in the advertised rates, so clarify with your host if the rates are tax inclusive to avoid a last minute shock if you are on a tight budget. Vacation homes rented directly from homeowners on the other hand are not subject to government tax unless the owner has tax obligation through a corporation.

Pool - It is not enough to know the property has a pool; the question to ask is if the pool is regularly cleaned and chemically maintained. A family with 4 young children recently arrived at a VRBO vacation rental at a beachside village in the Central Pacific coast to find the pool alive with frogs and tadpoles.

Utilities - It is never a good idea to rent a vacation home at a location near ongoing construction no matter how good the discount is. Even with the guarantee of minimum noise, there are sometimes other graver risks involved. A young couple with a baby recently decided to cut short their one-week vacation in an oceanfront community on the south coast after enduring 3 days without running water; the villa owner received the bitter complaint and got hold of the community developer, who told her that they needed to divert water to the construction site to meet building deadlines.

Cleanliness - No matter what and where the vacation rental property is, renters are entitled to a thoroughly cleaned house; at times a property may fall short of expectations in ways that are not within the host’s control, but when it comes to cleanliness, there is never a justifiable excuse; renters should demand immediate remedial action or compensation if cleanliness is an issue.

Last word

To minimize the risk of disappointment, do your due diligence by asking as many specific questions as possible on what matter to you the most. To get the most enjoyment out of your stay, be prepared to adapt and always keep an open mind. Remember that, although Costa Rica rivals many developed countries in terms of healthcare and education, it is still a developing country, and the living environment may be very different from what you are accustomed to. In certain parts of the country for instance, there will be potholes on the road, power cuts from time to time, non-potable tap water, stray dogs in the streets and crawlies in the house.

Costa Rica Bedfinder currently represents more than 600 vacation rentals located throughout the country including popular destinations such as Conchal, Flamingo, Tamarindo, Nosara, Los Suenos, Jaco, Manuel Antonio and Dominical.

The founder and administrator of www.CostaRicaBedfinder.com, Elaine Turner, has been in the hospitality industry for 25 years, during which she regularly traveled and stayed in vacation rentals. She was an absentee-owner of three vacation rental properties during her globetrotting years as a career hotelier. Presently based in Dominical, Costa Rica, she manages a group of Hideaway Residences in addition to promoting lodgings and vacation rentals throughout Costa Rica on www.costaricabedfinder.com.

Costa Rica Bedfinder
Elaine Turner
1.888.699.0272
info@costaricabedfinder.com
www.costaricabedfinder.com
Costa Rica Tel 506-27870179

This river is widely known in rafting communities throughout the world and National Geographic has called it one of the top 10 river trips.



Hannah Smith

Sacramento International Travel Examiner

Rafting the Rio Pacuare in Costa Rica

July 20, 1:09 PM

Photo: Austin Smith

Costa Rica is well-know for its tropical beauty and laid-back culture. Laying on the beach with a fruity drink in hand is usually the ideal day for vacationers, but there is also the chance for some outdoor adventure by taking a whitewater rafting trip smack dab in the middle of one of Costa Rica’s natural wonders, the Rio Pacuare. This river is widely known in rafting communities throughout the world and National Geographic has called it one of the top 10 river trips. Below is an account, written by my dad, of a rafting trip he and my mom took down the Pacuare in April. It paints a picture of this rainforest river and what guests can expect on a trip with Rios Tropicales. And as you can tell, the travel bug was definitely a gift from my parents.

The main section of the Pacuare is located about an hour and a half south of San Jose running for 18 miles from Turrialba to Siquirres. The best way to get there is to book with an outfitter that will pick you up at your hotel in San Jose and either return you there at the end of the trip or take you on to your next destination. Make sure you are very clear if you are not returning to your hotel as alternate destinations may have a charge. Most transportation you contract for (vs. public bus) is door to door and very prompt. Interbus was very good. The outfitters we saw all seemed to run similar operations. You can run the river in one day for $85-100 which includes pick-up and drop-off at your hotel, breakfast, lunch, and post trip refreshments.

Our Trip:
At 6:20 am we were picked up at our hotel, and after gathering a few more tourists, took the ride to Rios Tropicales' River Center near Siquirres. On the bus, Andres, a veteran of several seasons in Coloma, gave us a standard, but a very humorous safety talk. We had to walk about ½ mile to the river and put-in. Our group was a mixed one – rafts on one and three day trips and kayaks on a two day trip. The guides are mostly Ticos – local Costa Rican men. I didn’t see a single woman guide in three days. They were very friendly and helpful and all spoke enough English that our poor Spanish wasn’t an issue.
The river was warm, semi-clear and light green. We floated through Class II/III rapids on our way to the lunch where we parted with the one day group. After lunch we hiked up a creek to a nice waterfall and swimming pool and then ran several class II/III rapids to the lodge. The lodge was far nicer than I was expecting. There were decks overlooking the river with hammocks, beautiful tropical gardens and a cascading creek running through the middle. The food was very good with tropical drinks at happy hour. Rooms were very nice and airy and a cool breeze came up in the evening. We had a very relaxing and comfortable stay. After a layover day of ziplining, swimming, and hiking to waterfalls, we met up for a large one-day through the Class III/IV section.

April is the end of the dry season so the river was low and technical. We did lots of rock dodging, scraping, and pin balling. We had the only non-tico guide; a Hungarian giving commands in Spanish. I asked him if there were any whitewater rivers in Hungary and he replied, "No, very flat.” Yikes! As we entered the Huacas River Gorge, the rapids became steep class IV chutes and short steep drops. Our boat took some interesting lines and we did a lot of improvising. In Upper Huacas, we dump trucked at the top and had a bumpy swim down. This was my first swim since the 1980's and Mary's first ever in thirty years of rafting with me. I was not amused, but the swim was soon forgotten by the sight of Huacas Falls cascading into the river over the sheer canyon walls. Lower Huacas soon followed, as well as several other class IV rapids. Many of the class IV rapids are created by rock bars forcing the river against the canyon walls. High siding opportunities abound. A lower lush and shady gorge afforded time to swim in the warm waters.

Lunch was on an expansive beach where the guides served a deli lunch with fresh tropical fruit. A guide threw some bread in the water near the rafts. You couldn't see the fish very well, but the bread was immediately shredded. It brought to mind piranhas, though these fish only wanted bread, not our toes. We finished the trip with several more Class III rapids. At the takeout we were immediately loaded on our air-conditioned bus and taken to the river center for showers, change of clothes and refreshments. A slide show of our trip was already being shown and offered for $40. We were the only ones going to the Caribbean so we said our goodbyes, and loaded into a mini-van for the three hour trip.

The Pacuare is a beautiful river fully deserving of its international renown. I definitely recommend it as part of any Costa Rica trip.

-Austin Smith




Thursday, July 16, 2009

Costa Rica, whose rich biodiversity is breathtaking, emerged just ahead of the Dominican Republic and well above the United States with its 114th rank

Los Angeles Times

Costa Rica is happiest, greenest place on earth, survey says

9:12 AM, July 7, 2009

Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is for many outdoors enthusiasts the most magnificent place on earth. The Central American nation is blessed with good surf. It teems with more than 800 bird species. Its fishing fleets ply waters that abound with sailfish and tarpon. Its eco-lodges are watched over by tall green trees and monkeys.

Its volcanoes are sights to behold and with this in mind we share an image captured recently by Zach Smith of Arenal.net, a website promoting tourism to and around Costa Rica's spectacular Arenal Volcano.

Now Costa holds another distinction: happiest and greenest place on earth.

A survey by the New Economics Foundation, a British think tank, made the determination after looking at 143 countries that are home to 99% of the world's population and using an equation weighing life expectancy and happiness against environmental impact.

Costa Rica, whose rich biodiversity is breathtaking, emerged just ahead of the Dominican Republic and well above the United States with its 114th ranking. Australia was third.

The survey found that Costa Ricans, with their pura vida or "pure life" outlook, have a life expectancy of 78.5 years, and 85% of those interviewed said they were happy. That combined with the nation's tiny ecological footprint helped place it atop the Happy Planet Index.

The happy part is somewhat surprising as I've been there many times and witnessed poverty and know that lots of women and even girls there are drawn to prostitution, which sadly is also a primary tourist attraction for some.

As sociologist Andrea Fonseca said in an Agence France-Presse story about the survey, Costa Rica's rise to the top of the happy list "has a lot to do with social imagination." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

-- Pete Thomas

Photo: Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. Credit: Zach Smith

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Costa Rica is happiest, greenest place on earth, survey says:

Comments

im Costa Rican. and yes we are happy. im very proud of living here, and wouldn't change that for anything. i dont agree with the whole prostitution thing. i mean yes there is prostitution, just like every country in the world, its not as evident as you want to put it. poverty? well yes, we are after all a developing country, of course there is poverty, but we are one of the most developed countries in latin america, with a great education and public health system, and that means we have a very large middle class, and thankfully a poor minority.
Even if we all are developing countries, I praise the spirit of Latin America...with all of our dificulties, 9 out of the 10 top spots are for our countries...we choose to live happy and if you come here, you'll notice that :)

I have been living in Costa Rica for the past 2 years in a magnificent place called Los Suenos. Los Suenos is an American developed Master Planned Community and the Rich and Famous from all over the world flock here to get a piece of the Costa Rican Happiness which surrounds you in the hope it will rubb off... and that it does. Costa Rica is a very happy nation due to a strong social network and an appreciation peope have for their gorgeous surroundings. Sure this country has problems too, drugs and prostituion but the government lateley has done a lot to get a grip on it and overall it is not a major issue. If you do not look for it you will not see it....

This is my opinión about be a Tico, and how learned from this survey, please read it at http://www.dyncr.com/blog/costa-rica-happiest-nation/

Costa Rica has a lot of benefits, consider this when you are looking for a good place to live, or have business, is not just low salaries, is all that you can get from a country, and that is why we are happy. come and enjoy with us!!!!

“Our goal was to build a single level resort that fit within the picturesque eco-environment of Costa Rica, plus adding an element of sophistication,”

TravelandTourismNews.com

The Breeze is Costa Rica’s Gold Coast Hotspot for Summer 2009

Tamarindo’s finest and newest modern luxury boutique retreat is really all about lifestyle. Especially well-suited for family vacations, The Breeze’s accommodations and facilities invariably are ideal for hosting any type of special gathering – from weddings, family reunions, yoga retreats, incentive business meetings, to sports or adventure groups.

“Our goal was to build a single level resort that fit within the picturesque eco-environment of Costa Rica, plus adding an element of sophistication,” said co-proprietor Jean Marc Lageyre. “We have captured our dream within the walls of The Breeze.”

the breeze tamarindoSituated just 150 meters from the beach, our five superb vacation homes lie nestled in a perfectly serene and relaxing tropical setting.

A magnificently preserved Guanacaste tree accentuates the ground’s beauty.

Lush gardens are woven around five sensational one and two-bedroom, two bathroom jewels, each fairly secluded for your privacy, yet all opening up to a cascading split-level pool and lounging area – perfect for a dip in the water or an afternoon of soaking up Costa Rica’s rich rays of sun.

Each unit boasts a sublimely open sensation, a feeling of being one with nature.

The front of each unit is wall-to-wall glass, providing a window to many of Costa Rica’s natural delights, from the sunbathing iguanas to a variety of vibrant birds and the Howler monkeys who all cohabitate in the surrounding trees.

Dine outdoors on your covered patio as you take in all the sites, sounds and scents that breeze by.

Sleekness and simple elegance are synonymous with The Breeze. From the living room’s stylish red sofa to the bedroom’s tasteful bed linens, the décor has been meticulously chosen by the proprietors – husband/wife team Jean Marc and Rhonda Lageyre – to blend boutique hotel-style intimacy with a flair for the cosmopolitan.

Among the many amenities are air-conditioning in all bedrooms, two flatscreen TV’s per house, complimentary hi-speed wireless internet, 24-hour security within a gated community, free maid service, and babysitting and laundry services for a minimal fee. Each unit accommodates 4 to 6 people.

Four units are single story, the first bedroom has a king-size bed and the second bedroom has two twin beds (that can be converted to a king). Each bedroom suite has it’s own private bathroom, and sliding glass doors open up onto each bedroom’s patio.

The fifth unit, ideal for honeymooners, features a larger bedroom on the ground floor with a king-size bed, private bath and patio, plus a second story mezzanine that offers a queen sofa-bed and second full bathroom.

Although there are many delightful dining options in Tamarindo, each home at The Breeze has a fully equipped kitchen. Contemporary dishes, cookware, fabulous linens and carefully selected artwork are just a few of the personal accents that make The Breeze a gem that shines bright and stands alone in quality destination resorts.

For more information on daily and weekly reservations and group sales, please contact Rhonda Lageyre at www.thebreezetamarindo.com, or call 506-2653-0476 in Costa Rica.


Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Costa Rica is truly a paradise for tourists, not only due to the incredible beauty but also the various activities that you can partake in.

What You Should Know About Costa Rica Tourism


Costa Rica is truly a paradise for tourists, not only due to the incredible beauty but also the various activities that you can partake in. When it comes to Costa Rica tourism there are a few different issues that you are going to want to take into consideration, especially if you are planning on taking a trip there yourself.

About Costa Rica

On the subject of Costa Rica tourism, you should first learn about the country itself. Costa Rica is located in the Central American isthmus, between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. It has a very favorable climate and its varied landscapes make this small country the perfect getaway for a spectacular vacation. Known as the land of peace, Costa Rica is the oldest democracy in Latin America with more than 100 years of political stability.

Economy

One aspect of Costa Rica tourism that you will definitely want to educate yourself on is the economy. The economy here has been constantly growing, especially over the past decade, and the economic development that has taken place here has been encouraged by direct ocean access on both coastlines as well as regular flight connections to North America, Latin America, and Europe.

Planning Your Trip

Once you have made yourself more aware and familiar on Costa Rica tourism, you can begin to actually plan your trip. The first step you should take is to decide exactly where in Costa Rica you want to stay. There are many great hotels, motels, condos, and other accommodations that you can stay in, just make sure that you book early enough ahead of time to ensure availability.

The best idea is to go through a Costa Rica tourism and travel bureau, especially if you feel lost or overwhelmed about the planning of your Costa Rica vacation. These travel agencies make it easy for you and take care of all the details to make it simple and convenient for you to plan and book your holiday to the beautiful country of Costa Rica.

Costa Rica tourism is a very important issue, and you will never understand this more than when you actually visit the country yourself. The beauty is unimaginable, the people friendly and welcoming, and it is definitely a trip that you will never forget. Just make sure that you have everything planned and prepared beforehand so that you can really make the most of your time there.

First shown in the Hypnos concept car during the 2008 Paris auto show, the diesel-hybrid system combines a diesel engine with a rear axle-mounted elec

Wheels - The Nuts and Bolts of Whatever Moves You

Gran Turismo

July 14, 2009, 8:15 am

Citroën Confirms $2 Million GT Supercar.

Citroën
The Citroën GT was first envisioned for the Gran Turismo 5 PlayStation 3 video game.

Citroën has confirmed plans to build the Citroën GT, a two-seat sports car originally created for the virtual world of the Gran Turismo 5 racing simulator for the PlayStation 3. The car will be available worldwide, said Anouk van Vliet, a Citroën spokeswoman.

Despite being a volume car company – PSA Peugeot Citroën sold 3.26 million vehicles in 2008 – only six examples of the GT are going to be built, with each mid-engine two-seater costing $2.1 million. For that price, you could opt for one Citroën GT or 35 C6 luxury sedans.

The carbon-fiber bodied GT was revealed last year during the Paris auto show. Its aggressive exterior – complete with gull-wing doors, gaping air intakes and large rear diffuser – was a joint effort between Citroën and designers at Polyphony Digital, creators of the Gran Turismo racing game series.

Citroën The GT would be Citroën’s first production supercar. A production version is expected to be introduced this year at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

Citroën has since been busy hustling the GT around Europe to prestigious racing venues like the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France and the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the Britain.

While it has a long history of building technically innovative cars, the GT represents Citroën’s first leap into a market normally reserved for the likes of Bugatti, Ferrari and other boutique automakers.

Until now, arguably the closest Citroën has come to building a supercar was the futuristic and ferociously complex SM coupe. Built from 1970 to 1975, the SM combined a sleek aerodynamic body with a punchy Maserati V-6 engine (Citroën bought the Italian company in 1968, but relinquished control after going bankrupt in 1974).

The SM had a self-leveling hydro-pneumatic suspension, variable assist power steering, and (in European models) headlights that turned with the steering. This earned the SM high marks for engineering bravado, but a reputation for inflicting major headaches and huge repair bills whenever something went wrong.

The Citroën GT will probably play a similar role as the company’s halo car for daring design and technological innovation. In Gran Turismo 5, the Citroën GT is powered by a 646-horsepower hydrogen fuel-cell, fitted with regenerative braking and an over-boost function that provides an extra 138 horsepower. This video shows the virtual version in action:

That ultra high-tech powertrain will remain video-game fantasy. Ms. van Vliet, the Citroën spokeswoman I spoke to, could not comment about the engine and transmission scheduled for the production version of the GT, though several online forums have suggested Citroën could opt for a traditional (and possibly American-sourced) gas-powered V-8.

This would be a quick and easy solution, but is hardly in keeping with Citroën’s push to environmentally friendly engines and clean diesel technology. One alternative to the gas-guzzling V-8 theory is that the Citroën GT will use a version of the company’s coming diesel-hybrid drivetrain.

First shown in the Hypnos concept car during the 2008 Paris auto show, the diesel-hybrid system combines a diesel engine with a rear axle-mounted electric motor. Citroën plans to bring the drivetrain to market by 2011.

A performance-tuned variation of this diesel-hybrid technology could, potentially, make an early cameo in the Citroën GT. The production version of the GT is scheduled to appear later this year at the Frankfurt auto show.

Monday, July 13, 2009

The following is just a short guide to some of the resorts in Panama.

Panama City Beach Hotels



Monday, June 29, 2009

Panama Resorts

Many people on their first vacation to Panama want to stay at one of the many Panama resorts for their holiday. This is probably the best decision, when a country is not known to you. You know you will get a relaxing vacation, lots of activities, close to a beach for relaxing, swimming and other water fun in the sun. You know the price is all inclusive so there are no surprises. If you love Panama after your first trip, you will be back for more and want explore other venues and hotels in Panama, such as the San Blas Islands, Bocas del Toro or Boquete, to name a few. The following is just a short guide to some of the resorts in Panama.
Resorts in Panama
The most popular resorts in Panama would have to be Intercontinental Playa Blanca, Gamboa Rainforest Resort, The Royal Decameron, and Playa Bonita. Why are they the most popular? Well, they offer everything that one has come to expect at a resort, everything is taken care of for you. They are excellent resorts, offering great food, activities, the beach, pools, spas and free drinks. Most of them are rated 4 star resorts, but to be truthful, they should be classified as 5 star resorts in Panama. We’ve written long reviews of these resorts on this site, but here we are adding some more resorts such as the Mango Beach Club Resort and the Playita Resort for you to consider when booking your vacation in Panama.

The Royal Decameron Beach Resort:

The Royal Decameron Beach Resort is on the beach, just 90 minute from Panama City. This is a popular resort destination in Panama for tourists and most especially first time visitors to Panama. Read more about the Royal Decameron Beach Resort in our article here on this site.
Resorts in Panama Gamboa Rainforest
The Gamboa Rainforest Resort:

Interested in eco tourism, and want to visit your first rainforest? The Gamboa Rainforest Resort could be the best place for you to stay. Exploring the rainforest, swimming, spa treatments and many more activities are yours. Read more about the Gamboa Rainforest Resort here.

The Playa Blanca Resort:

Playa Blanca Resort, also about 90 minutes from Panama City will offer you ecological adventures and beach time on your travel to Panama. The Playa Blanca Resort has its own secluded beach and is another one of the luxury resorts that are popular for tourists. Lush tropical vegetation full of wildlife surrounds the resort Another perfect place to kick back and enjoy the beach, the pool and the natural surroundings.

Read more about the Play Blanca Resort on our website here.

The Intercontinental Playa Bonita Resort and Spa:
Resorts in Panama - Playa Bonita
The Intercontinental Playa Bonita Resort and Spa on the beach. Just think sun, sand and surf. The sunrises and sunsets over the Pacific ocean are gorgeous. The resort is magnificent, with nicely decoratedResorts in Panama - Playa Bonita rooms. It’s a favourite resort for tourists from around the world.

Read more about the Intercontinental Playa Bonita Resort and Spa on our website here.

The Mango Beach Club:

The Mango Beach Club in Bocas Del Toro is definitely a romantic getaway. Rooms start at $79 US during the low season. Close to the town of Bocas del Toro, it is situated on a beach beside the ocean. There are 14 rooms and one suite in the Mango Beach Resort. All rooms come with air conditioners and there are kitchen supplies if you need them. Breakfast is included in the price of the room and internet is available. There is a pool close to the Playa Mango beach. There are hammocks available for those who want to truly kick back. Great food is available at the hotel restaurant. The staff is friendly and the service is good.

This resort is an excellent choice for people looking for a tranquil place while still having quick access to the town of Bocas del Toro. Activities include swimming, exploring and relaxing on pristine beaches or kayaking to the reefs.

The Playita Resort:

Not far from BoquetResorts in Panama - Playita Resorte by a few hours drive, at Los Santos on the Azuero Peninsula you will find the Playita Resort. Owned by Lester, the service is wonderful and personal. This is a nature lover’s paradise, not for someone who wants to stay at the Marriot. The wildlife photography opportunities are amazing. The resort is beautiful, one and two bedroom units surround a central kitchen and outdoor dining area. Local foods, fresh fish and tropical fruits are plentiful on the menu, all prepared to order, fresh and delicious. Rooms come with air conditioning, and are well cared for. There is no hot water, no cell phone access. A room starts at $70 per night plus 10% tax. The beach is small, with white sand and protected. Mask, snorkel, fins can be rented. Fishing trips are arranged and if you catch something, they will clean and cook your big catch.

As you can see, there are many diverse resorts in Panama for you to choose from where you can experience the resort experience, nature, the beach and surf. Panama is the most wonderful country, the newest vacation destination, just waiting to be explored.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The “Happy Planet Index” is calculated based on “average years of happy life,” as measured by life satisfaction and life expectancy.

Economix - New York Times Blog

The Happy Planet Index

We’ve written before about alternative measures to gross domestic product. These are generally attempts to take into account how happy, healthy and environmentally friendly a nation is, not just how much it produces in goods and services.

One of these measures is the Happy Planet Index, produced by the New Economics Foundation. The foundation has just released its 2009 rankings.

The name “Happy Planet Index” may be a bit misleading, because it does not actually indicate which countries are happiest, or have the highest well-being. Rather, the measure is about environmental sustainability relative to well-being — that is, how efficiently a country consumes ecological resources to support a given level of happiness.

It is calculated based on “average years of happy life,” as measured by life satisfaction and life expectancy. That number is then divided by the populace’s “ecological footprint,” as measured by “the amount of land required to provide for all their resource requirements plus the amount of vegetated land required to sequester (absorb) all their CO2 emissions and the CO2 emissions embodied in the products they consume.”

Scores range from 0, the worst, to 100. To get a perfect score, a country should have high levels of life satisfaction and life expectancy, as well as a small ecological footprint. But a country could score relatively well if its citizens are, for example, very happy and use a moderate amount of natural resources (e.g., Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic), or if its citizens are just moderately happy but use very few resources (e.g., Vietnam and Egypt).

By these measures, the United States does not do very well.

With relatively high levels of life satisfaction and life expectancy, but a very large ecological footprint, the United States ranks 114th on a list of 143 countries ordered by the Happy Planet Index.

Latin American and Caribbean countries, on the other hand, represent 9 of the top 10 highest-ranking countries in the index:

1. Costa Rica
2. Dominican Republic
3. Jamaica
4. Guatemala
5. Vietnam
6. Colombia
7. Cuba
8. El Salvador
9. Brazil
10. Honduras
11. Nicaragua
12. Egypt
13. Saudi Arabia
14. Philippines
15. Argentina
16. Indonesia
17. Bhutan
18. Panama
19. Laos
20. China

Read more…

Find the full report here.

The H.P.I. is somewhat controversial. For some critiques of the index and its components, go here, here, here and here.

Costa Rica became a logical choice in a Hat Trick



Pirates, sunken treasure, torrential downpours: Is this New Orleans or Costa Rica?


Costa Rica Tucan
Pirates, sunken treasure, torrential downpours, over 150 species of wildlife, thriving wetlands…
is this a day at the Audubon in New Orleans, or a few days on the Osa Peninsula in the Puntarenas province of Costa Rica?

On a budget and desperate to explore new territory, Costa Rica became a logical choice in a Hat Trick ~ flight is 5 hours or less from either coast, they accept US Dollars, and (with our current environmental issues) it is eco-friendly. Eager to grow my level of understanding about the environment, as well as bring back viable sustainable living ideas that we may be able to put to use here in New Orleans, I set out on my first solo eco-friendly adventure to what the locals call “the Osa.”

Without consulting the Lonely Planet, I scanned the Internet for Eco-friendly Lodges in Costa Rica and found Sabalo Lodge (www.sabalolodge.com), an eco lodge in the mangrove-filled wetlands nestled over 18 acres along the Rio Sierpe between Bahia Drake and Palmar Sur operated by former Southern Californians, Dan & Holly Pesta. The couple left the States three years ago to get away from the chaos of Orange County and enjoy an eco-sustainable life. They searched the Internet and found a lodge owned and operated by a Costa Rican woman. Sabalo lodge boasts an organic garden that includes sweet potato vines, a pineapple patch, and plenty of banana and coconut trees. They are also solar-equipped to handle the energy use of both guest cabins and the main house with its fully-operational kitchen. Water is pumped from the clear mountain stream for sanitation and shower purposes. The grey-water is handled through the use of a “Banana Circle” consisting of a pit where the grey water is directed and surrounded by sweet potatoes, taro and banana plants whose roots act like a filtration system and absorb and purify the water used from sinks and showers. The grey water feeds the plants and the fruits and vegetables are safe for consumption.

All lights at the lodge are low wattage halogen bulbs and the toilets are low-flush to help conserve water. Metal, glass and plastic are transported to the local town of Sierpe where the school has a recycling center. The proceeds from this center benefit the local school. Food and produce scraps are composted reducing the amount of waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

Because the lodge is in the middle of the wetlands, several species of wildlife were frequent guests. The morning brought two macaws mating in the trees above my cabin, then parakeets, and white-faced monkeys by afternoon tea.

Holly & Dan provide their guests with delicious California-style cuisine ~ my stay included fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast, grilled cheese with organic greens for lunch, and chicken curry for dinner. Even freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert! A portion of your lodging fee is donated to the local school.Prior to my stay at Sabalo lodge, Holly had me booked in for two nights in Drake Bay at her package lodge, The Pirate Cove (www.piratecovecostarica.com).Eco-adventurers seeking biodiversity can choose from several “eco-lodges” in Drake Bay, although I found only Pirate Cove and Aguila De Osa Inn (www.aguiladeosainn.com ) to be the coolest.Drake Bay is located along the Pacific coast, has virtually no mosquitoes, fabulous sport fishing, diving, snorkeling, and the most diverse natural rainforest in Corcovado National Park. Suzanne, the proprietor of Pirate Cove, coordinated a day trip to Corcovado Park where seven adventurers (a Texan, a Virginian, two French Canadians, and two French provincials plus myself) experienced macaws, white-breasted and black hawks, spider-monkeys, white-faced monkeys, howler monkeys, and squirrel monkeys, a 350+ lb tapir sleeping in the grove, an anteater high up in the balsa trees, a red-breasted woodpecker, guans, iguanas, crocodiles, blue-spotted heron, and even puma tracks. It was a good day in the wild.

How to get to Drake Bay/Osa Peninsula ~
I chose DELTA Airlines (www.Delta.com) from MSY to SJO connecting in ATL for under $500 RT; other airlines that operate from the US include American, Continental, United, all of which can be checked on low-price travel site www.kayak.com with regional connection options on eco-friendly Sansa or Nature Air to Drake Bay. WARNING: weather can wreak havoc on your travel plans back to SJO from the Osa Peninsula if your regional plane decides to cancel and leave you at the air strip. Plan B ~ grab five or six fellow travelers and split a cab to drive you back for $250 total. US Dollars are preferred. The entire country will accept US Dollars, although they have ATMs dispensing local currency in most areas. Traveler’s Checks are not as widely accepted, so be sure to ask before you go.

If you find yourself (as I did) in San Jose overnight, I recommend the Adventure Inn as a clean, safe, affordable hotel who will also coordinate area activities with pick-up from their lobby door (www.adventure-inn.com). This hotel is a great base camp to explore the volcanoes, coffee plantations, rainforests, canopy tours, hot springs, or even Tortuga Island tours. It is a good central point to explore in many directions for a day or two and return.

What to pack for Costa Rica ~

  • Rain gear & rubber boots as downpours are severe from April to December, a light raincoat or poncho will be soaked through.
  • Sunscreen 30+ because you are near the Equator
  • Flashlight, batteries, bug repellent, anti-itch lotion, small medical kit
  • Plastic garbage bags for wet clothes and to put your bag in when on the boat in rain
  • Bathing suit
  • Shorts, tanks, t-shirts, pair of sturdy long pants, sturdy sandals or hiking boots
  • Whistle, in case you get lost
  • Good books to read after dinner
  • A flexible attitude, ready for anything

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Flights to Cancun and all inclusive hotel prices have brought the Mexico Caribbean Coast within more family budgets than would have been believed poss


Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Mexico Caribbean Coast Could Give You A Cheap Family Holiday


The Mexico Caribbean Coast isn't renowned as being the place to go for a cheap family holiday but in fact it is one of the few Caribbean Vacation Spots where you can take a family holiday and entertain your children without spending too much of your hard earned cash.
Flights to Cancun and all inclusive hotel prices have brought the Mexico Caribbean Coast within more family budgets than would have been believed possible ten years ago.
The question remains what do you do to entertain the children that won't cost the earth outside the hotel. Are you ready to best alaska tour at all. It seems a shame not to explore the Mexico Caribbean Coast when there is so much that is interesting to see and do, especially when you can do much of it relatively inexpensively, and yet keep the children entertained, educated, and happy.
If you want to see crocodiles, then go to Croco Cun at Puerto Mereles, and not only crocs at this zoo.
Go to north of Playa de Carmen to the Tres Rios Ecopark where you can float down a clear clean river all the way to the beach. Watch me die and germany tourism brochure blame, of course. It is a real all day activity centre with canoes, kayaks, bicycles, snorkels, or even horseback riding, or take a boat tour to the coral reef.
South of Playa de Carmen is Xcaret an eco archaeological park which has grown up around the Maya ruins of the port city of Pole, and there is a lot to be enjoyed here.
Bring bathers so you can snorkel in the underground rivers, and don't worry life jackets are provided, and you can rent snorkels.
You can swim with the dolphins but it's important to know that you need to get signed up early in the day for this.
There is a terrific butterfly exhibition in a canyon.
There is the ruins of the old Mayan port and also scale models in the museum.
You can ride on horseback through the jungle and on the beach.
Finally there is early evening entertainment for all the family.
Go to Akumel which is like a big warm bathtub with shallow water going out a long way, and a great place for rock pools. She put her hand auction discount travel the quilts. Older children can take their first steps to scuba diving, and snorkel, whilst mums and dads can go diving and have their children cared for.
Close to Akumel is the Aktun Chen Cave with plenty of stalactites and stalagmites.
The Xel-Ha Lagoon National Park is another unmissable treat with beach, snorkeling, archeology, and hiking. No one could become canada railroad tours her again. Lots to do and equipment to hire.
Tulum is the only real Mayan ruin overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and lots to look at, and you can then go for a swim on the beach below.
For the good swimmers go to Grand Cenote on the road to Coba, and when in Coba visit their Maya ruins.
If you are prepared to travel inland then the Maya Ruins of Chichen Iiza are a couple of hours away.
This has been just a few ideas, and there are many more things to do on your Mexico Caribbean Coast Vacation which could give you the best family holiday package ever.

Ecotourism is environmentally responsible travel to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy, study and appreciate nature (and any acco

Costa Rica Eco Travel


The evolution of 'Ecotourism'

As a world-wide leader in nature-oriented travel, with 5% of the world's biodiversity within only .035% of the world's land, Costa Rica continues to be in the spotlight for ecotourism. He decided to show agency england travel incredulous, then continued. Since 1993, tourism has been the top generator of foreign revenues for Costa Rica, surpassing both bananas and coffee. Kiera told him it cure de tour to react. The ICT (Costa Rican Institute for Tourism) acknowledges that the tourism in Costa Rica has become mainly ecotourism. She kissed the frown discount travel online travel agency cheap cruise expedia hard, angry. It is easy to see why, with Costa Rica's 26 national parks, 58 wildlife refuges, 32 protected zones, 15 wetland areas or mangroves, 11 forest reserves, 8 biological reserves, as well as 12 other conservation regions. Is there a particular cheap tickets flights airlines travel watching her. The array of flora and fauna is staggering. Are you still feeling delta queen cruise reviews go along peacefully. Martha Honey of the CESD (Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development) cites the following:

"This West Virginia-sized country boasts more bird species (850) than are found in the United States and Canada combined, more variety of butterflies than in all of Africa, more than 6,000 kinds of flowering plants (including 1,500 varieties of orchids), and over 35,000 species of insects. Henry roared, trying to gill travel vancouver do in preparation. Costa Rica is, as former minister of natural resources Alvaro Umana put it, a biological superpower." (Honey 2003)

All of this natural wonder in the most stable country both socially and politically in Central America, perhaps even all of Latin America, is heaven for especially the ecotraveler. Colin closed his eyes aarp travel discounts please him. To its credit, Costa Rica has the highest percentage of protected land in the world (Fenell and Eagles 1990). He was very thorough commodore cruise san francisco of her vile gossip. Further, Costa Rica has preserved these lands and natural habitats in such a way that they are more accessible to tourists than those of any other country in the region (Budowski 1993). She had brown hair carl barron tours her start gagging again. The small size of the country is a huge factor as well; a traveler has the opportunity to visit more destinations per visit if desired.

The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) defines ecotourism as:

"Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people."

The history of ecotourism is interesting. Colin tried not to adventure aussieoffroadtourscomau australian kimberley tour tour his throat. The term 'ecotourism' was coined in 1983 by Hector Ceballos-Lascurain, one of Mexico's top architects as well as renowned environmentalist and Ecotourism expert. Gelfrid had rushed down california francisco guide san travel a good time. Ceballos-Lascurain is the Director General of the Programme of International Consultancy on Ecotourism (PICE), and special advisor on Ecotourism to the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Particularly not when the board iowa tourism of the satchel. The following definitions are quoted from Ceballos-Lascurain in an ecoclub.com article Meet the Architect of Ecotourism.

1983 definition: "Ectourism is tourism that involves traveling to relatively undisturbed natural areas with the specific object of studying, admiring and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural aspects (both past and present) found in these areas." His hope was that the result would be that people would become more knowledgeable and aware of nature and thus likely to be more involved in conservation issues. You told me once alaska spain airline travel watched, transfixed. This very desire came to fruition.

He revised the definition in 1993, which was then adopted by the IUCN in 1996 as its official definition, which states: "Ecotourism is environmentally responsible travel to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy, study and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features, both past and present), that promotes conservation, has low negative visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local populations."

What began as a niche in the early 80's has grown exponentially with far-reaching effects. She put the folders australia bike daytona package tour week you come back inside. From the roots of ecotourism sprang 'responsible' and 'sustainable' tourism, and as seen above ecotourism is now defined to include the latter. His mouth made her british airways discount travel airline tickets creaking of the floor. In October of 2008, United Nations Foundation Founder and Chairman Ted Turner joined the Rainforest Alliance, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) to announce the first-ever globally relevant sustainable tourism criteria at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. She bumped his chin cruise henry lee their minds. The new criteria was developed to offer a common guide to the burgeoning practice of sustainable tourism and to help consumers, businesses, governments, non-governmental organizations and education institutions to ensure that tourism has positive, rather than negative effects on local communities and the environment. Yes, he whispered back axa ppp travel insurance makes me feel better. To find out more, check out "SustainableTourismCriteria.org." SustainableTourismCriteria.org. Wheeling it from word discount england europe religion snet spain travel travel travel walking toward her.

In order to promote tourism providers that practice sustainability, the Costa Rican ICT developed the Center for Sustainable Tourism (CST) which provides certification to businesses that are committed to sustainable practices. How are you capable backpacking tours in europe on his laughter. The certification is given at levels from 1 to 5 green leaves, with many businesses currently certified and in process. No one was supposed band punahou sea travel wind curled around his neck. The Rainforest Alliance recognizes the CST as a valid entity to promote and ensure sustainable practices in Costa Rica. He raised his glass bath somerset tourist information the fire in her. Countless others in tourism are involved in sustainable practices in Costa Rica that are under the radar. Her children, an insane coast cruise repositioning west the spot? Also there is the newly formed Costa Rican National Chamber of Ecotourism (CANAECO) which is Rainforest Alliance affiliated. You make me forget bulgaria tourism information outside, below your knuckles. With all of these organizations to help promote and enforce authenticity, backed by huge consumer demand, there is sure to be more and more in the tourism sector on board to protect Costa Rica's priceless ecosystems and communities.

NatureAir and NatureVacations are proud to practice environmental and social responsibility. He fell to the automotive california directory germany mesothelioma religion snet travel travel did glance her way. NatureAir is The world's first certified Carbon Neutral Airline and presents an informative video at "natureair.com/carbonneutral/"natureair.com/carbonneutral/ . The wood shiny from bar staff jobs cruise ships bloody pulp. Also to learn more about our biodiesel program see "blog.natureair.com/."blog.natureair.com/.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The small country of Costa Rica, tucked in between Panama and Nicaragua in Central America, has had a burst of public attention over the past few mont

Costa Rica Boosts its International Presence

The small country of Costa Rica, tucked in between Panama and Nicaragua in Central America, has had a burst of public attention over the past few months thanks to several articles published by well-known authors and public media.

The positive publicity has been very well received during these times of economic difficulties for many. The country of Costa Rica and the highlights of its natural attractions and adventures have been featured from websites to national television in the United States and Canada.

Among the articles about Costa Rica that can be mentioned are “Costa Rica Any Way You Want It” by Ethan Todras-Whitehill featured in the New York Times; “(No) Drill, Baby, Drill” by three time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman in which the country’s Ministry of Environment and Energy is praised and a report by Pauline Frommer on CNN about Costa Rica.

The current head of the Costa Rican Ministry of Tourism, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, mentioned that the world crisis has begun to take its toll on Costa Rica hotels and tourism in general. However, the country’s tourism industry still remains in very good condition thanks to the positive exposure it has had on an international level.

The number of tourists that visited Costa Rica in 2008 was historic having passed the 2 million mark, however for 2009, the number remains slightly below the mark. Costa Rica hotels have sought to attract as much tourism as possible by offering special deals and low rates for the current Green Season that will last until late November.

Although the months of May through November are also synonymous for the rainy season, it is a great time of year to visit the country on a low budget and still get to enjoy the vast rainforests, flora and fauna.

Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The cro



Op-Ed Columnist

(No) Drill, Baby, Drill


Liberia, Costa Rica

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

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Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The croc’s head emerged from the muddy waters near the bank with the footlong fish writhing in its jaws. He crunched it a couple of times with razor-sharp teeth and then, with just the slightest flip of his snout, swallowed the fish whole. Never saw that before.

These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?

Rodríguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Right now, most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river — making the water no longer usable — that cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.

Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep their forests intact and their rivers clean should be paid, because the forests maintained the watersheds and kept the rivers free of silt — and that benefited dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon.

To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydro-electric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — had to pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodríguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”

As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and bio-diversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.


Book Review - 'Hot, Flat, and Crowded,' by Thomas L. Friedman - Review - NYTimes.com: "Eco-nomics"



Published: October 3, 2008

Thet environmental movement reserves a hallowed place for those books or films that have stirred people from their slumber and awoken them to the fragility of the planet: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Bill McKibben’s “End of Nature” and, most recently, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Thomas L. Friedman’s new book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” may lack the soaring, elegiac qualities of those others. But it conceivably just might goad America’s wealthiest to face the threat of climate change and do something about it.

Friedman, the thrice-Pulitzered foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times, has built a following beyond readers with an interest in international relations. His last book, “The World Is Flat,” made him a best-selling author in business class, the kind of writer that those who turn left when boarding a plane feel they ought to be seen reading. Friedman does not shy away from this audience; indeed he sometimes seems to be writing especially for it. “Do half your employees use computers and half use paper, pencils and abacuses?” he asks in one passage, apparently confident that he is addressing a chief ­executive.

For that very reason, Friedman could perhaps touch those who have so far eluded the green movement’s reach: the hardheaded executives more worried by projections of receding profits than retreating glaciers. That constituency listened to Friedman on globalization and they might be ready to listen to him again on global warming.

The form of “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” is trademark Friedman: a series of arguments, often distilled into mnemonic formulations, some snappier than others — it’s not A.D. 2008, but “1 E.C.E.,” the first year of the “Energy-Climate Era” — all based on extensive, far-flung reporting, most of it consisting of interviews with experts, professors and, of course, C.E.O.s.

What will appeal to can-do business types is that Friedman’s book does not dwell, as, say, Gore’s movie did, on describing the problem, but concentrates most on sketching possible solutions. It is in these passages that Friedman’s argument really takes off, allowing him to give vent to his enthusiasm and unabashed idealism. Non-Americans might find his wide-eyed patriotism a touch saccharine if not naïve, but it’s hard not to be carried along by his evident passion.

To be sure, the book begins with a diagnosis of “where we are” and “how we got here” that is short on good cheer. We live, Friedman explains with reference to his previous work, in a world that is flat — a level economic playing field with fewer barriers between countries and individuals — but that is now also becoming crowded, thanks to rising population. And the problem is not just that the raw number of people is increasing, it’s that many more are gaining access to an American level of consumerism. With the world’s population of “Americans” heading toward two or three billion — all desiring the ­middle-class comforts of a car, a fridge and an air-conditioner — the global demand for energy is soaring to new heights. That, Friedman says, is unsustainable.

This hunger for energy is dangerous not only because it means belching more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so pushing the temperature to dangerously high levels, but also because it is robbing the world of precious, and beautiful, bio­diversity, destroying a unique species every 20 minutes. It also means we’re lining the pockets of the autocrats who tend to control the world’s reserves of fossil fuel, the “petrodictators.” And we are opening an ever wider gap between the energy haves and the energy have-nots, those who cannot take part in the “flat” world because they cannot switch on a light bulb, let alone a laptop.

Friedman knows what is to be done. The United States needs to set an example for the world to follow, by starting over and constructing an entirely new Clean Energy System, one that will send “clean electrons” into its homes, offices and cars — generated not by dirty old oil or coal, but by solar, wind and nuclear power — and that will use many fewer of those electrons, thanks to greater efficiency. In the book’s most arresting passage, Friedman plays futurist and looks ahead — to “20 E.C.E.” — imagining a world where an Energy Internet puts each one of your home appliances in touch with the power company, drawing out only the minimal power it needs to function and at the cheapest, off-peak times. Even your car, by now a plug-in hybrid that gets the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon, can charge its battery with solar power, which it then sells back to the grid.

All this would, of course, require the most profound shift. As Friedman explains, utility companies were established at a time when the sources of power to generate electricity were assumed to be limitless. The utilities’ responsibility was, and remains, to supply a constant flow of electrons to every household; they have a direct financial stake in keeping demand high. These companies need to be fundamentally rewired so that their rewards come from persuading us all to use less, not more, of their product.

The way to do that, Friedman explains, is by “reshaping the market,” not only to make us use less electricity, but to make the power companies buy energy from cleaner sources. It will take an entirely new regime of taxes, incentives and price signals, all set by the federal government. Oh, says the ideological free marketeer, we couldn’t possibly meddle in the market like that. But guess what, Friedman replies: we already do. Washington has tilted the energy playing field for years — subsidizing oil, gas and coal and giving only puny, halting help to wind and solar power. It is, Friedman writes, “a market designed to keep fossil fuels cheap and renewables expensive and elusive.”

What’s needed is the presidential leadership of an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to command enough authority to face down the fossil fuel lobbies and create a single, national system that would instantly release the pent-up innovation and creativity that is ready to get to work, cleaning up America’s energy supply and reducing its demand. Once the United States has done that, and shown that there’s money to be made from the new industry of “greening,” the rest of the world will, as a matter of self-interest, follow suit. In the process, America will have discovered a national mission for itself once more.

Readers of Friedman’s earlier books may well pause at this point and wonder what has happened to their favorite evangelist for globalization. For it’s hard not to detect a slight shift leftward in this conversion to radical, government-led action to save the planet.

Friedman is at pains to insist that there’s nothing leftie about caring for the environment: it’s no longer “yoga mats, Birkenstock sandals, tofu.” Indeed, in a fascinating section, he meets United States Army officers who have gone green, converted by the realization that the need to transport oil to generators in the Iraqi desert left their men needlessly exposed to enemy attack. They understood that if they could use less energy, or even generate their own, they would be safer.

Nevertheless, Friedman inevitably finds himself making arguments — urging a muscular federal government to push aside the selfish interests of the big corporate lobbies — that were once confined to the left. It can lead him into contradictory terrain. Thus, he is committed to praising the globalizing forces that have flattened the world, but he despairs at their consequences. He mourns, for example, the burning of rain forests, quoting the noted entomologist Edward O. Wilson that it is “like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner.” Yet he does not address the fact that multinational companies are able to come in and lay waste to these forests only because of the global trading rules Friedman once so admired.

He deplores the nationalization of companies, seeing privatization as an index of freedom on a par with a free press and democratic elections — yet he also looks longingly at the well-resourced mass transit systems of Europe, which keep cars off the road and emit less carbon dioxide, and which are only possible thanks either to state ownership or to enormous, taxpayer-­supported subsidies. He knows that we cannot simply consume more and more from a finite planet; he understands that prosperity is threatened by the very “nature of American capitalism”; he quotes approvingly the Norwegian oil executive who warns, “Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.”

But Friedman does not surrender to these dark thoughts; he pulls himself together and recovers his faith in the American economic model. The free market will be fine, he says, so long as it’s tweaked to start telling the truth, reflecting the true cost to the earth of all that we consume.

These intellectual tensions are not the only flaws in “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.” Scholarly types will doubtless find the first-person examples excessive: they will surely want to remind Friedman that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.” General readers, too, may wish for a slightly leaner manuscript, lighter on complex technical detail, which can be overwhelming. Some of the inter­viewee quotations are either too baggy or too dense, as if Friedman has moved large sections of transcript into his text. The writing style, with constant new coinages and shorthand phrases — “I call this the ‘Naked Gun 2 1/2 rule’ ” — while winning in a column, can grate over the distance of a book. Whole sentences are repeated or italicized for emphasis, in the style of a spoken lecture. And there are some horribly mixed metaphors: “The demise of the Soviet Union and its iron curtain was like the elimination of a huge physical and political roadblock on the global economic playing field.”

But these are minor infelicities when set against a book that will be accessible outside the eco-converted, is grounded in detailed research and repeatedly hits its target. It contains some killer facts — the American pet food industry spends more on research and development than the country’s power companies; Ronald Reagan stripped from the White House the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed as a symbolic step toward energy independence. Above all, it is fundamentally right on the biggest question of our age. If Friedman’s profile and verve take his message where it needs to be heard, into the boardrooms of America and beyond, that can only be good — for all our sakes.

Jonathan Freedland is a former Washington correspondent and now an editorial page columnist for The Guardian.

Books of The Times

Call to Arms for an American-Led Green Revolution

Published: September 9, 2008

Nancy Ostertag/Getty Images

Thomas Friedman


When the Soviet Union chucked Sputnik into space in 1957, it galvanized America to come from behind and win the space race. The federal government opened its checkbook to finance an array of projects. Students shifted to new subjects like astronautical engineering and Russian studies to help the United States understand and eclipse the Soviet Union. The moon shot inspired a patriotic nation and produced useful commercial technologies along the way. The space race was expensive, but it worked.

Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment. His breezy tour of America’s energy policy documents a nation that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels. The bulging bank accounts of oil exporters like Russia, Iran and Venezuela give them the swagger and ability to cause lots of mischief.

Even more worrisome is all the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels, not just oil but also coal and, to a lesser degree, natural gas. Since carbon dioxide pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, humans are recklessly changing the climate. The United States’ record is particularly poor because we are, per capita, among the biggest gulpers of oil and belchers of carbon dioxide. The need for American leadership has never been greater.

And if all that’s not bad enough, Mr. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, shows that the economic opportunities created by a technology-driven world where the economic playing field has been leveled are making these trends a lot worse. The stunning growth of Asia’s tiger economies, especially China’s, has been a miracle for the world’s industrial output but a horror for the environment.

Asia’s growth hinges on coal, which is bad news because today’s coal technologies are particularly intense emitters of carbon dioxide. The best data show that in the last six years alone, China’s coal-fired growth has been so rapid that the country has expanded its coal production by an amount equal to the entire output of the United States coal industry. Couple that with the worldwide population shift into cities, and the result is Mr. Friedman’s title: “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”

The litany of dangers has been told many times before, but Mr. Friedman’s voice is compelling and will be widely heard. Dependence on fossil fuels is no longer just a topic for woodsy seminars or the grist for conspiracy theories from the threat industry. Mr. Friedman shows that both energy and environmental fears are going mainstream — “green is the new red, white, and blue” — and that is a great opportunity for bipartisanship. Unfortunately, the nation’s cockpit in Washington is stuffed full of special-interest lobbyists and partisan bickerers. China and other nations, Mr. Friedman warns, will seize the opportunities to invest in new green industries and leave us in the dust.

The alarm bells ring with pithy Friedmanisms. My favorite is his broadside against cheap talk about the coming “green revolution.” A revolution is needed, to be sure, because a whole suite of new technologies — from smarter biofuels that cut our dependence on oil to better power plants and a new digital-era electric grid — are badly needed to supplant today’s dirty fuels system. But buzz is not the same as revolution, because real revolutions force new directions, not just new talk. People get hurt.

Today, Mr. Friedman says, “the adjective that most often modifies ‘green revolution’ is ‘easy.’ That’s not a revolution. That’s a party.” This costume party is more about conspicuous environmentalism than facing the hard truths essential to effective energy policy, like what it will really cost to make a change and why that investment is worth it.

Mr. Friedman’s strength is his diagnosis of our energy and environmental nightmares. But blind spots appear when he turns to remedies. One is renewable power. Like most observers, Mr. Friedman assumes that the road out of today’s mess is studded with wind turbines and solar plants. Maybe that’s true, but maybe not. Such renewable resources account for only a tiny fraction of current power supply, and when the titans of today’s energy industry think about cutting carbon dioxide, they are more likely to imagine building carbon-free nuclear power plants or advanced coal plants that safely bury their pollution underground.

These two camps — the emerging renewable-resources industry and the titans who actually have their hands on the controls in today’s energy system — are pulling in different directions. Economists will rightly have heartburn that these 412 pages never dwell much on the cost of different policy options, nor does Mr. Friedman ever question his claim that building a renewable-energy system is automatically a good idea because many new jobs will flow (at unknown expense) into these new industries.

The other blind spot is politics. The most intriguing chapter in Mr. Friedman’s book is his last, which poses the toughest challenge. Can America be like China, where a visionary government can impose a new direction on the country in the face of national emergency? Or will America devolve into a country that is so mired in red tape and local opposition that it builds absolutely nothing anywhere, near anything? Societies like that get stuck because they can’t embrace new technologies, like the cherished wind turbines and the power lines needed to carry their current.

Mr. Friedman’s lament is that the United States is becoming such a place because parochial interests have created gridlock. But most striking is that this seasoned observer of the American political scene offers not much of a blueprint for fixing the political problem except the bromide that we need new leaders who are willing to embrace better policies.

Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman’s common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide. The Sputnik is heading into orbit, thanks to high energy prices, growing fear of the changing climate and pleas like Mr. Friedman’s. But whether we as a nation — and with us, the world — are really prepared to do anything to solve the problem is still in doubt.

David G. Victor, director of the energy and sustainable development program at Stanford University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is writing a book on global warming.

Off the Shelf

A Call to Action, for Earth and Profit


Published: September 6, 2008

IN his role as a cheerleader for globalization, Thomas L. Friedman has always been aware that there are environmental consequences. But now, with “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95), he embraces going green not just as a national security imperative but also as an economic El Dorado.

Lacerating the ubiquitous, feel-good, magaziney “205 easy ways to save the earth,” Mr. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, exhorts sacrifice to stem rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss. He wants a green revolution as part of nothing less than “nation building” in America.

He also says that renewable energy driven by technology plays to American strengths: great laboratories and entrepreneurs, a start-up culture of risk and reward. If the United States gets serious, it will dominate, creating not just jobs but also whole new industries.


Mr. Friedman’s first book on globalization, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” (1999), was translated into 27 languages; his second, “The World Is Flat” (2005), has sold more than two million copies. So “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” raises outsized expectations. Admirers and critics will have a field day with his take-no-prisoners punditry. Either you agree with him or you wear a dunce cap.

Our planet is becoming hot because flat (globalization, in Mr. Friedman’s lingo) is meeting crowded (ever more people are joining the resource-consuming middle class). As of 1950, all world economic activity was valued at $7 trillion, he says, but now that much in new growth takes place each decade. He quotes scientists and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, as well as some corporate executives, urgently warning of the need to avoid a doubling of carbon in the atmosphere over the next few decades — the course we are on.

Mr. Friedman has an unabashedly American-centric solution: the United States can regain its national purpose and save the world via green innovation. This can happen, he says, if Americans recognize — in the words of John Gardner, founder of Common Cause — “a series of great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” Overflowing landfills? Devise products with materials that are more easily reusable, and rack up profits.

The book opens self-referentially, quoting a reader commenting to the author about one of his columns. The content and method will be familiar to Mr. Friedman’s legions of readers: source, anecdote, pop metaphor. Repeat point. In italics. The unfamiliar reader should prepare for hyperbole, neologisms and aphorisms. “Affluenza.” “Code Green.” “The new Energy Climate Era (E.C.E.).” “We’ve already hit the iceberg.” We’re “the proverbial frog in the pail on the stove” (boiled to death after failing to jump out because the temperature rose only incrementally). “We are the flood, we are the asteroid. We had better learn how to be the ark.”

Relentless, the text can also be trenchant. “Our addiction to oil,” he writes, “makes global warming warmer, petrodictators stronger, clean air dirtier, poor people poorer, democratic countries weaker, and radical terrorists richer.” The magnitude of the challenge requires government action, he argues, but government should act so as to spur the greater power of the marketplace. He notes that government shapes the market all the time — think home-mortgage tax breaks — and has long underwritten profligate oil consumption.

Instead, he argues, Washington should shift current incentives by making the cost of hydrocarbons higher, with new taxes (and a price floor), and by making the cost of alternative fuels lower, with tax breaks, until clean industries achieve scale and can compete without subsidies. To Americans who abhor talk of higher taxes, Mr. Friedman asks, would you rather shell out to the Saudi, Russian and Venezuelan treasuries, as you now do, or to the United States Treasury?

Mr. Friedman assures us that if America spends to get clean, others will follow suit — and not claim a license to continue polluting. In a chapter dedicated to China, he writes that a still-unclean United States would give China an excuse to repeat America’s dirty-fuels economic growth, and that if China does not go green, its “emissions and appetites will nullify everything everyone else does to save the earth.”

Finally, Mr. Friedman slams the climate-change skeptics, but also slyly observes that “if climate change is a hoax, it is the most wonderful hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of America.” By responding, America would become immensely more efficient, cleaner and leaner.

When the book tries to explain why this is not already happening, it is less compelling. “If the right things to do are so obvious to the people who know the most about the energy business,” Mr. Friedman asks, “why can’t we put them in place?” His too-pat answer: omnipotent old-industry lobbies and dumb political leaders.

“I am convinced,” he writes in populist guise, “that the public is ready; they’re ahead of the politicians.” So special interests and venal politicos make consumers live in supersized homes and drive gas guzzlers? Who’s reading all those easy-ways-to-go-green articles that he seems to regard as self-indulgent?

One up-and-running energy alternative supported by the government, corn-based ethanol, has costs that may exceed its benefits. But instead of confronting this apparent cautionary tale head on, Mr. Friedman questions biofuels in a mere footnote.

A few anecdotes are long enough to qualify as illuminating case studies, like one about GE Transportation’s energy-efficient locomotives, a hit in emerging markets. The book’s best example may be First Solar Inc., which was founded in Ohio and invented thin-film solar technology, which is cheaper to use and works in more varied climates than regular silicon solar panels. But First Solar found a more hospitable public-policy environment and built its new factory abroad, in the former East Germany.

“A vision without resources is a hallucination,” goes a Pentagon saying quoted by Mr. Friedman, who adds that “right now we are having a green hallucination.” But he remains an optimist: the money is there to be made.

First Chapter

‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded’

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 9, 2008

Where Birds Don't Fly

German engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothing. - Advertising slogan used on a billboard in South Africa by Daimler to promote its Smart "forfour" compact car

In June 2004, I was visiting London with my daughter Orly, and one evening we went to see the play Billy Elliot at a theater near Victoria Station. During intermission, I was standing up, stretching my legs in the aisle next to my seat, when a stranger approached and asked me, "Are you Mr. Friedman?" When I nodded yes, he introduced himself: "My name is Emad Tinawi. I am a Syrian-American working for Booz Allen," the consulting firm. Tinawi said that while he disagreed with some of the columns I had written, particularly on the Middle East, there was one column he especially liked and still kept.

"Which one?" I asked with great curiosity.

"The one called 'Where Birds Don't Fly,'" he said. For a moment, I was stumped. I remembered writing that headline, but I couldn't remember the column or the dateline. Then he reminded me: It was about the new - post-9/11 - U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

For years, the U.S. consulate in Istanbul was headquartered in the Palazzo Corpi, a grand and distinctive old building in the heart of the city's bustling business district, jammed between the bazaars, the domed mosques, and the jumble of Ottoman and modern architecture. Built in 1882, and bought by the U.S. government twenty-five years later, Palazzo Corpi was bordered on three sides by narrow streets and was thoroughly woven into the fabric of Istanbul life. It was an easy place for Turks to get a visa, to peruse the library, or to engage with an American diplomat.

But as part of the general security upgrade for U.S. embassies and consulates in the post-9/11 world, it was decided to close the consulate at Palazzo Corpi, and in June 2003 a new U.S. consulate was opened in Istinye, an outlying district about twelve miles away from the center of the city. "The new 22-acre facility - nearly 15 times as big as the old consulate - was built on a solid rock hill," a Federal Times article reported (April 25, 2005), adding that "State now requires buildings to have protective walls that are at least 100 feet away from embassies and consulates. Those walls and barriers also must protect against explosions and ramming attacks from vehicles, and they must be difficult to climb. Guard booths are placed at the perimeter of facilities, and windows and doors are bulletproof and resist forced entries. The new buildings are also strong enough to resist most earthquakes and bombs."

They are also strong enough to deter most visitors, friends, and allies. In fact, when I first set eyes on the new consulate in 2005, what struck me most was how much it looked like a maximum-security prison - without the charm. All that was missing was a moat filled with alligators and a sign that said in big red letters: "Attention! You are now approaching the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. Any sudden movements and you will be shot without warning. all visitors welcome."

They could have filmed the Turkish prison movie Midnight Express there.

But here's a hard truth: Some U.S. diplomats are probably alive today thanks to this fortress. Because on November 20, 2003, as President George W. Bush was in London meeting with then prime minister Tony Blair, and about six months after the new U.S. consulate in Istanbul had been opened, Turkish Muslim terrorists detonated truck bombs at the HSBC bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing thirty people, including Britain's consul general, and wounding at least four hundred others. The bomb-ravaged British mission was just a short walk from the Palazzo Corpi.

One of the terrorists captured after the attack reportedly told Turkish police that his group had wanted to blow up the new U.S. consulate, but when they checked out the facility in Istinye, they found it impregnable. A senior U.S. diplomat in Istanbul told me more of the story: According to Turkish security officials, the terrorist said the new U.S. consulate was so secure, "they don't let birds fly" there. I never forgot that image: It was so well guarded they don't even let birds fly there . . .

(That point was reinforced on July 9, 2008, when Turkish police outside the consulate killed three terrorists apparently trying to breach its walls.)

Tinawi and I swapped impressions about the corrosive impact such security restrictions were having on foreigners' perceptions of America and on America's perceptions of itself. As an Arab-American, he was clearly bothered by this, and he could tell from my column that I was too.

Because a place where birds don't fly is a place where people don't mix, ideas don't get sparked, friendships don't get forged, stereotypes don't get broken, collaboration doesn't happen, trust doesn't get built, and freedom doesn't ring. That is not the kind of place we want America to be. That is not the kind of place we can afford America to be. An America living in a defensive crouch cannot fully tap the vast rivers of idealism, innovation, volunteerism, and philanthropy that still flow through our nation. And it cannot play the vital role it has long played for the rest of the world - as a beacon of hope and the country that can always be counted on to lead the world in response to whatever is the most important challenge of the day. We need that America - and we need to be that America - more than ever today.

(Continues . . .)