COSTA RICA ART,CRAFTS AND CULTURE

Historically, Costa Rica has been relatively impoverished in the area of native arts and crafts. The country, with its relatively small and heterogeneous pre-Columbian population (devastated at an early stage), had no unique cultural legacy that could spark a creative synthesis where the modern and the traditional might merge. Ticos now speak proudly of their "cultural revolution."
ART
Escazú in particular is home to many contemporary artists: Christina Fournier; the brothers Jorge, Manuel, Javier, and Carlos Mena; and Dinorah Bolandi, who was awarded the nation's top cultural prize. Here, in the late 1920s, Teodorico Quiros and a group of contemporaries provided the nation with its own identifiable art style--the Costa Rican "Landscape" movement. The artists, who called themselves the Group of New Sensibility, began to portray Costa Rica in fresh, vibrant colors.
In Puerto Limón, Leonel González paints images of the Caribbean port with figures reduced to thick black silhouettes against backgrounds of splendid colors.
The Ministry of Culture sponsors art lessons and exhibits on Sunday in city parks. University art galleries, the Museo de Arte Costarricense, and many smaller galleries scattered throughout San José exhibit works of all kinds.
CRAFTS
At Guaitil, in Nicoya, not only is the Chorotega tradition of pottery retained, it is booming, so much so that neighboring villages have installed potters' wheels. Santa Ana, in the Highlands, is also famous for its ceramicsIn Escazú, master craftsman Barry Biesanz skillfully handles razor-sharp knives and chisels to craft subtle, delicate images.Many of the best crafts in Costa Rica come from Sarchí. Visitors are welcome to enter the fábricas de carretas and watch the families and master artists at work producing exquisitely contoured bowls, serving dishes, and--most notably--carretas (oxcarts), for which the village is now famous worldwide.

THE OXCARTS OF SARCHÍ
The Ox-cart Museum, in Salitral de Desamparados, on the southern outskirts of San José, has displays of campesino life, including a collection of hand-painted oxcarts, in a typical old adobe house. Also, the Pueblo Antigua, outside San José, has a living museum featuring the carts.
MUSIC AND DANCE
Many dances and much of the music of Costa Rica reflect African, even pre-Columbian, as well as Spanish roots. The country is one of the southernmost of the "marimba culture" countries, although the African-derived marimba (xylophone) music of Costa Rica is more elusive and restrained than the vigorous native music of Panamá and Guatemala, its heartland. The guitar, too, is a popular instrument, especially as an accompaniment to folk dances such as the Punto Guanacaste, a heel-and-toe stomping dance for couples, officially decreed the national dance.
FOLKLORIC DANCING

Guanacaste is the heartland of Costa Rican folkloric music and dancing. Here, even such pre-Columbian instruments as the chirimia (oboe) and quijongo (a single-string bow with gourd resonator) popularized by the Chorotega are still used as backing for traditional Chorotega dances such as the Danza del Sol and Danza de la Luna. Vestiges of the indigenous folk dancing tradition linger (barely) elsewhere in the nation. The Borucas still perform their Danza de los Diablitos, and the Talamancas their Danza de los Huelos.

BIODIVERSITY OF COSTA RICA

Campylopterus hemileucurus (Deppe, 1830)
(Colibrí, gorrión, ala de sable violáceo)

Costa Rica contains 5% of the world's Biodiversity. The largest national park that is famous for its biodiversity among Ecologist is the Corcovado National Park, where there is a profusion of wildlife, which includes big cats and tapirs. The other national park found here is, Tortuguero National Park, wherein there are 320 species of birds and a huge count of reptiles. The name Tortuguero is known as, the turtle catcher ot turtle hunter. The rare Green turtle, loggerhead turtles, giant leatherback and hawksbill are found here. The white throated monkeys, are the main attractions out here. Costa Rica on a whole has around 100 speices of mamals, 2,000 plant speices and around 800 species of birds. The INBIO (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad), collects royalties on any natural discoveries of medical significance.

Plants and animals together

In the dry forests and rainforests, in the lowlands, the swamps and in the oceans, the plants and the animals are interdependent for their very survival.

It is, of course, well known how birds rely on forests to exist, and how the deforestation of the planet has threatened many species and driven some to extinction.

In the rainforests and cloud forests, plants rely on plants: the epiphytes, mainly orchids and bromeliads, live in the canopy, right on the trees, in order to get the light they need.

Atta leaf-cutter ants carry their little pieces of leaves on their backs to their homes -- the leaves are rotted into a mulch which the ants tend carefully. In that mulch, they grow a particular fungus, which is what the colony feeds on.

Take away the leaves, and the ants go away; take away the ants, and there is no food for some of the numerous species of antbirds in the forest.

Species adapt to their environment. Some poisonous animals use bright coloring to warn their prey. Some butterflies taste bad to birds; others have adapted their coloring to look like the butterflies that taste bad to birds! Some insects look just like the leaves, stems or bark among which they hide to protect themselves.

In many cases, two different species adapt themselves to fulfill each other's needs. The forests abound with insects that feed off the nectar of a specific type of flower, thus pollinating that flower and helping it survive. There are several dozen different species of figs in Costa Rica, and each one is pollinated by a different species of wasp. Modify the fig trees and the wasps will die out, as will the birds that prey on them for food. Remove the wasps and the fig trees will be gone within a generation.

Bright colors attract animals with a good sense of sight, such as the hummingbirds. Other pollinizing agents have a strong sense of smell, such as flies and butterflies; plants which they pollinate are particularly fragrant. Yet others, such as bats and some birds, are nocturnal, and there are plants which emit their scents only at night to attract them. The flowers are usually shaped to accomodate the part of the pollinizer's body that it uses to carry the pollen away -- wings, beak, feet ...

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

HOWARD GARDNER WHO CREATED THE TEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES.HE WROTE THAT DOES NOT EXIST A UNIQUE INTELLIGENCE IN THE HUMAN BEING BUT IT MARKS TO THE POTENTIALITIES OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.