When we hear about Costa Rica , we often don’t even know where it is, this country situated between Nicaragua and Panama, is a place which is slightly bigger than Switzerland. The first thing that pops into our heads, are bananas, coffee and wonderful beaches to surf at or awesome landscapes.

 

Nowadays, Costa Rica is providing a home for many Europeans and other immigrants as well as  for the local trance scene, who are stepping out of the first world to search for paradisiacal places to live and to party

 

It is often compared to Goa in a sense that there are still small outdoor goa parties where people pass the chillum around the fire, and dance on mountain tops and beaches. In this small country in Central America, there is a movement of people doing underground goa parties and small festivals with international artists 

 

 

 

This movement has grown from a couple of Italians who basically brought the Trance music to Costa Rica to organized groups of people doing their own parties and festivals. Nowadays in Costa Rica there are three well established party crews: Colectivo Ajna, Transelastica  and Psychedelic Nomads. Even if in Costa Rica the trance population is very small there are also some other small underground crews that are helping to make the scene grow with successful events.  The combination of small parties, beautiful landscapes and International artists from the very beginning such as GMS, Talamasca, Space tribe, Goa Gil, Neuromotor, Dark Soho, Infected Mushroom (back in the late 90´s), Aerodance, XP Voodoo, Sam@Chaishop, Wizzy Noise and many others, to more recent parties with artists like Iron Madness, Wizack Twizack, Frantic Noise, Baphomet Engine, Necropsycho just to mention a few. 

 

This sum of factors exposes the local scene to very nice underground parties, where the artists are able to have a firsthand contact with the local scene.  The crowd who attends to these parties is a very energetic crowd which always guarantees an intense nice psychedelic feeling on the dance floor. You will always have people dancing and smiling and pumping the rest of the crowd!!! It is also a reason why these small parties are so successful, due to the small amount of people attending. This has been lost in the bigger parties around the world. And today it is very hard to find these small underground parties.

 

In general, the scene in Costa Rica is developing as now there are also some local artists who make their own music or have their own live act or label. There is R2, a local psytrance project; produced by Arturo Oreamuno; you can check out his music here http://www.myspace.com/r2lab

 

 There is also Samorost (a.k.a Guru Sigma), who has already a release with CONSCIOUS DREAMS records from Netherlands, on VA-Kokopelli Conscious Dreams , and a few other minor label participations.  

The DJs are growing and getting better every time, getting more and more gigs outside at Festivals in Guatemala, parties in Panama, and El Salvador. 

 In addition to these parties which usually happen during the week-ends, the psytrance scene has also moved to clubs and bars. At least 3 out of 5 weekdays, you can find some good DJs at a local indoors venue, constantly warming the crowd up for the bigger week-end parties.

 So if you are in the area of Central America and looking for a nice party or visiting Costa Rica feel free to visit the parties for sure you will have a good time!!! 

 You can always check out parties at the local psytrance forum: www.crbeats.com , also the bigger parties are often posted at www.goabase.de ,www.chaishop.com and Isratrance forums.

 Costa Rica is definitively worth a try if you want to relax and plus attend to a nice party with beautiful people!!