Accidents, Crime Taint Tourism
By Brina Harris, The Herald

Costa Rica has just closed the books on its most successful tourist high season - November through April - on record.

But the crush of tourists also kept police and morgue authorities busy.

The latest deaths came May 4 when David and Carole Mahkne of Cape Carancua Bay, Texas, drowned after their sportfishing boat was apparently tossed by a wave. Details of the incident are sketchy but apparently neither were wearing lifejackets despite being in a treacherous river mouth.

The boat's two-member crew survived, but it was the first sportfishing death anyone in the us$250 million per year local industry could recall.

At us$1.5 billion per year in income, tourism is the leading source of hard currency and a major employer in this Central American nation of four million people.

However, unburdened by a U.S.-style tort system, tour operators potentially may cut corners on safety to increase profit. At the same time, the social disparity of relatively wealthy tourists in a country with per capita income of under us$4,000 per year has led to some targeting tourists for crime.

The country does not keep any statistics on crime against tourists, and police are reluctant to assist foreign crime victims. In part the language barrier leads many tourists to not report theft. As a result, quantifying crime against tourists here is an inexact science. However, the U.S. consulate says it noticed an increase in the number of its citizens seeking to replace stolen passports in the first three months of this year.

Costa Rica also seems unwilling to publicize its crime problem because it is seen as damaging the country's image as a peaceful and safe place. The government, which surveys tourists twice a year, does not ask them if they were crime victims during their stay.

''Tourism authorities seem to assume that cold, hard facts will scare away potential visitors,'' the local English language weekly newspaper, the Tico Times, wrote in a recent editorial.

''There is no doubt that there is room to improve, but it is a minimal percentage'' of tourists victimized, said Costa Rican National Chamber of Tourism president William Rodríguez. He estimated that fewer than 25 percent of the country's 1.4 million annual visitors are victims.

Rodríguez said he shares a widely held view that ''these things can happen in any place in the world'' and added that ``sometimes the tourists themselves are too trusting.''

But near-weekly reports in the local media have highlighted robberies targeting tourists, from the exploits of a group of thieves that follow tourists from San Jose's international airport to rob them of their luggage to tour groups whose hotel rooms were ransacked while they were out sightseeing.

In addition, tourists face the usual risks, including the country's notoriously deadly roads, the strong currents that mar some of its most popular beaches and intense sunshine that dehydrates and burns fair skin speedily.

But then there are other risks, including those of the adventure tours that lure many tourists each year, and the state of medical facilities.

Two tourists drowned on rafting excursions in the last seven months, another had a limb mistakenly amputated at a hospital and yet another was severely injured on a zip-line ''canopy tour.'' On those tours clients hang from a heavy cable by a harness and let gravity take them from treetop to treetop, often at heights of over 500 feet above the ground and at speeds exceeding 50 mph.

Rodríguez insists that ''99.9 percent of tourism companies are very responsible people because this is our goose that lays the golden eggs,'' and an accident would ruin business.

But as U.S. travel agents begin to fear legal liabilities back home for trips booked abroad, some companies are finding that merely meeting Costa Rica's safety standards is not enough.

At the Turu Ba Ri canopy tour and aerial tram, visitors must sign a waiver acknowledging the risks, and medical staff is on duty at all times. Company officials say this is because of pressure from cruise-ship companies.

The company says that in its 18 months of operation, only two tourists have been treated for injuries, one for a insect bite and another for a twisted ankle.