Word: costa
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With habitats crashing, animals that live there are succumbing too. Environmental groups can tick off scores of species that have been determined to be at risk as a result of global warming. Last year, researchers in Costa Rica announced that two-thirds of 110 species of colorful harlequin frogs have vanished in the past 30 years, with the severity of each season's die-off following in lockstep with the severity of that year's warming...
...evangelical Christian leaders (including Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life; the Rev. Floyd Flake of New York City; and the Rev. Jesse Miranda of Costa Mesa, Calif.) who have begun an initiative to fight global warming, declaring, "Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors...
Savings still go far in Central America. "I know people who live here on less than $1,000 a month," says Sadlier. Even in tonier Costa Rica, $1,500 buys monthly comforts (including $150 for a full-time housekeeper). Many doctors in Guatemala City, the capital near cosmopolitan Antigua, have been trained in the U.S. or Europe, and they make house calls. Retirees in Costa Rica can qualify for a $500-a-year version of Medicare or use private hospitals that cater to fussy foreigners. Is your ticker tuckered out? Open-heart surgery can be had for just...
...boom has its ugly-American side. Beachfront development has devastated parts of the reef around the diver's paradise of Roatán, the best-known of Honduras' storied Bay Islands. And although Antigua and Costa Rica are relatively safe, burglaries are up in Honduras, driving the development of gated communities. But Bill and Judith Allred, who in 1998 bought a pod-style home in Roatán conceived by the Canadian designer Hal Sorrenti, say common sense helps ward off crime. "This isn't St. Barts," says Judith. "You don't go out at night wearing jewels...
...gringo migration grows, so do real estate prices. Ocean-view lots and houses in Costa Rica start at $200,000 today and range up to seven figures, says Edgar Santamaría, regional director for Century 21. So retirees in Costa Rica are moving to Guatemala and Nicaragua, the latest frontier, where similar plots cost a tenth of that. But home building can move at a tropical pace: 18 months after Sadlier and Budinger bought their house, and a year after they were supposed to have moved in, they're still waiting for the builders to wrap. "Mañana might mean...