tank tops flip flops newsletter edition no. 41

A good friend of ours, Mike Poynton, is backing a project that we think is important that everyone knows about.  The project is a kickstarter campaign for an innovative company that will plant a tree for every bottle of water you buy and they will recycle the bottle in a very unique way.  The Kickstarter campaign ends on Friday so if you want to help out do it NOW!

Mike Poynton is from Chicago (we won’t hold that against him) is a legal resident of Costa Rica and has lived in Playa Hermosa for the last 10 years, has a beautiful wife, daughter and son, is always involved in the community and is one of the best promoters of our area.  He has gone on to form his own company called Paradise Social that helps small companies with their social media programs.  We have hired Mike before and he is great!

That is why when Mike gets behind a project we know it is a good cause so please take a look at what he has wrote about the project and please support the cause.

From Mike Poynton

All:

62 hours left! If you haven’t already, please pledge whatever you can at http://goo.gl/jCn2KB.

For those of you whom this message catches off guard and are scratching your heads, it’s a Kickstarter.com campaign I’m involved with that “crowd sources” money to kickstart  a startup company. I’m the guy on the ground here in Costa Rica with Treeson Spring Water. One tree planted for every bottle sold. Comes in a plant-based, biodegradable, non-GMO, toxin-free bottle that goes in the US Mail instead of the trash. When it arrives back at Treeson HQ it’s converted into clean energy and more bottles. If it DOES end up in the environment, it degrades. We take plastic out of the environment – period! Bye bye Pacific Garbage Patch! Watch the video at http://goo.gl/jCn2KB. We’re starting with spring water sourced here in Braulio Carrillo National Park. We’ll be sourcing locally/regionally worldwide moving forward. And spring water is just the start.

We’ve already planted 38,000 trees here in Costa Rica to make sure we’re doing it right – some of which my parents helped plant with my wife, daughter and me a couple of years ago.

Hope you’ll support us (me) at http://goo.gl/jCn2KB. We’re so close but we still need YOUR help to reach our $95,000 goal by Friday at 10PM!

Thanks!

Mike Poynton

The list of direct flights to Liberia airport keeps getting longer.  In another sign of further momentum building towards growth in the Papagayo region, another North American airline is providing nonstop service into Costa Rica’s Liberia International Airport (LIR) which is the gateway to the famed Guanacaste region and our own Papagayo area. 

On Monday, November 1^st, 2012 the Canadian airline, WestJet, inaugurated the first of its regularly scheduled flights to Liberia.  The flight connects Toronto, Canada, with Liberia, Guanacaste in the northern Pacific of Costa Rica.

The airline will be travelling twice a week (Mondays and Saturdays) to Costa Rica, using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with capacity for 166 passengers.

According to information from the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT, in Spanish), this flight will allow the country to provide 34,528 additional seats to and from Canada per year, its second most important tourism market, after the United States.

According to Allan Flores, Tourism minister, the arrival of WestJet is the result of the “open sky” agreement signed with Canada recently.

The executive vice-president of operations for WestJet, Cam Kenyon, stated that this new route, which is free of layovers, between the Pearson International Airport in Toronto and the Daniel Oduber International Airport, represents a milestone for the company, which was founded in 1996.

“This is the first time in 16 years, in which we are providing service in Central America, which will allow us to continue offering our clients more opportunities to experience new destinations. We hope the service between Toronto and Costa Rica will be very successful,” he added.

WestJet is a low cost airline that offers regular service to 81 destinations in North America and the Caribbean.  The airline provides jobs to 8,600 people, and has 99 Boeing 737 aircraft in its inventory.

According to ICT, the typical Canadian visitor spends approximately 15 nights, and spends an average of $88 per day (data from 2005-2010).

The activities that most attract Canadians in Costa Rica are adventure tours such as canopy, snorkeling, surfing, and other more traditional activities such as enjoying the beach and bird watching.  And now that there are more flights to Liberia, it’s even easier to enjoy what Guanacaste has to offer.