Look for the video tour icon on the properties detailed listing page (such as Le Cameleon or Banana Azul) or you can see all the hotels with video tours for example on the hotels page by looking for the “See video tour”  text.

This is a great way to really experience a place before you and see if it’s right for you.

You can also find all sorts of other videos shot about Puerto Viejo on the Photos, Blogs and Videos page.

If you know of a property which has a video and it is not already listed, please let us know at info@puertoviejosatellite.com. This option is available for all upgraded listings.

A feature article in Sunday’s New York Times travel section has many locals and business owners talking optimistically about the future.

This article and others from publications which generally focus on higher end travelers such as Travel+Leisure Magazine,  Condé Nast Traveler or USA Today also make official what we’ve all been seeing for some time now: Puerto Viejo isn’t just for backpackers and surfers anymore!

The number of visitors to the Puerto Viejo Satellite and Talamanca News sites also indicates a strong interest. There were more than 20,000 visitors to the sites each month for the first three months of 2010!  Page views were 43,800 per month in this period (see the full traffic graph here).

Downtown Puerto Viejo, Dec 19, 2009. Photo by drewdomkus.

The Costa Rica Chamber of Hotels surveyed hotels around the country and the Caribbean hotels surveyed had a 100% occupancy rate. Other beach areas also reported very strong occupancy numbers although San Jose results were less positive.

Here at Puerto Viejo Satellite, the year also ended very strong with more visitors to the site than ever before: December ended with a record 15,735 different visitors coming to the website (32% over last Dec) and over 34,000 page views (37% over last Dec)!  That indicates a lot of potential visitors researching the area for the future vacation planning.  Of the visitors about 40% surfed the site from the United States, 10% from Canada, 26% from within Costa Rica and the remainder from the rest of the world.

The site also hit a new high ranking on the Alexa web tracking service; steadily rising through the rankings to break through into the world’s top 500,000 websites and is currently ranked 455,390. This is substantially higher traffic than any of the other Puerto Viejo area websites.

Why are these numbers significant?  Vacations always start with research and planning.  Bigger numbers can indicate more people are looking to plan their vacation on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.  An informal survey shows that much of Puerto Viejo’s popularity has come at the expense of the traditional Pacific vacation crowd.  Despite decreased travelers overall due to economic slowdown, there continues to be a growing interest in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica.

We attribute this to our great community of users who over the year have left 100’s of comments on listings and on news articles and have helped us keep all our information current. There are now 204 places listed on the map: hotels, restaurants, stores, services, tours and more.  The site has also had a lot of new features added over the last year to keep up with the growing interest in the area and make one comprehensive place where visitors can find out everything they need to know about Puerto Viejo.

Here’s to a prosperous and safe 2010 for residents and visitors alike!

One neat feature recently added shows the distance nearest restaurants, shopping and services to each hotel or vacation rental listing. Take a look at any of the detail pages for any of our accommodations listings to see how it works. This way you can know before you book what kinds of things are nearby — and not miss any of the hidden gems in the area which may just be around the corner from your hotel but which you hadn’t noticed.

Here’s our Puerto Viejo Top Pick accommodations — click on any of them to see what the nearby businesses listing feature looks like:

If your favorite place to shop isn’t listed, please feel free to add it.

Head to the Restaurants page and look for listings which have a View Menu shown.

Some menus you can see which we have so far are:

• Cafe Rico
• Jungle Love
• Loco Natural
• Mojos Beach Grill

If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, email us a clear photo, PDF or Word document of your menu and we’ll get it posted.

A number of people have commented that the forum has disappeared from Puerto Viejo Satellite and they missed it. Sorry to all you fans but I had to remove it.

The forum unfortunately kept getting attacked by spammers and the forum software made it very laborious to delete these spammers. I tried making it harder to register and then people had trouble getting registered but the spammers still found their way through. So with all the hassles…that was the end of it.

But you may have noticed I recently added the ability to comment on any place listed on the site, for example here’s the page for Cocles Beach.  For other places and businesses: go to the map page, open the listing you’re interested in from the links on the left or below the map and then click view full listing.  So that’s a great place to rave (or rant) about a good meal you’ve had for example.

And of course, you’ve always been able to post comments about our news stories here on the Talamanca News as the lively discussions about the marina, Le Cameleon and the jailed rapist has shown.

But what if you need a place to post your car for sale, to look for a good electrician or to find people interested in starting a ukulele trio?

Don’t despair.  You can use the discussion threads on our facebook page.

The link to go directly to the discussion area is here and I’ve also added it to the Discuss menu from the main site. Don’t forget to “become a fan” of Puerto Viejo while you’re there if you’re a facebook user and share photos etc.

The page is new so if  you know of others in the area, please just email us at info@puertoviejosatellite.com. If the business isn’t listed yet, you can add them on the add listing page.

Traffic has grown at a very fast rate ever since the website has launched and the website is bigger and better than ever with:

• More listings than ever
• More features than ever like the recently added restaurant page or the listing detail pages (see this one for example)
• More complete information than ever – additional transport options for example added to the transport page as we find out about them

The area has also benefited from the marketing savvy of the owner one of the newer hotels in town, Banana Azul.  Banana Azul was recently even mentioned on the Today show as a affordable vacation spot in these recessionary times. As more people find Banana Azul, they also discover the whole area as they discover the place that is a good fit for them or visit local restaurants and tour providers.

The growing tour company Gecko Trail Adventures has also contributed. Their Costa Rica tour packages have a strong emphasis on the Caribbean coast and so many people discover this area even if they don’t know Manzanillo from Montezuma.

All in all, we see great things ahead!

“What’s the currency?” “Are US dollars accepted?”  “What kind of money should I bring?” “Is there an ATM?”

Well I’ve gotten many of these questions over the years and have finally compiled them into a Money Matters page on Puerto Viejo Satellite.  You can get the full list of questions and answers here or if you’re replying to an email, just send them to www.puertoviejosatellite.com/money.php.

If you’ve got more or better suggestions for people on how to deal with money matters, feel free to comment on the article. Feedback is definitely appreciated.

Costa Rica Colones