At first, I was not too thrilled about being in Liberia. It definitely is not a tourist town so I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, and it also seemed a little scarier than La Fortuna. But once I got out into the city this morning and actually saw it (rather than trying to figure it out based on what I saw when we drove in last night), I started to love the city! It’s been our first true “culture shock” since we have been in Costa. It isn’t like anything that we’ve visited yet, mainly because it isn’t geared towards tourists at all. It has been a nice change to not have souvenir shops everywhere and to not see as many tourists as natives. I actually feel like I’m in a foreign country for this first time on this trip.
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| Our hotel, Hotel Wilson... with Vegas style light up palm trees |
The city is awesome. We spent today just wandering around trying to figure everything out. This city is MUCH larger than La Fortuna (about 5,000 in La Fortuna compared to 50,000 here), so we split up into groups and basically divided and conquered the whole city. Then we got together/still have to get together to tell each other what all we noticed. We found everything from upper class houses to lower class establishments and everything in between. From this experience, I now realize that the only way to truly figure out a city is to have no plans and just walk around all day long. It is great. Especially in Liberia where we got to actually see the culture of the city without it being distorted by tourist attractions.
My favorite part of the day by far was just sitting in the main plaza (which is in the center of town) and watching everyone. I was there around noon, so a lot of school kids were on their lunch break. In the center of the plaza, there is a gazebo that is completely open so you can see into it from all sides. There were probably about 10 or so kids probably around my age that had brought music with them and were break-dancing in the gazebo! It was so cool to see the culture and how they did what they love to do… hang out with friends and dance… in the most popular part of the city. It has inspired me to learn how to break-dance. We’ll see how that one goes. I love the style and vibe that all of the kids here give off. Their clothing style is something that I can relate to. Most of the boys, if they weren’t in their school uniforms, were wearing tank tops and a cool pair of shoes, and quite a few were skateboarding around. It makes me really wish that I had my longboard with me. I wish that I knew Spanish and that I was going to be here longer so that I could become more involved with the style of this city.
I never thought I would say this, but I actually ate at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. We didn’t realize that it was Chinese food until we got inside and looked at the menu. I thought that ordering regular food in Spanish was hard, but ordering CHINESE food in Spanish was another story. Surprisingly, we were all fairly happy with our meals so it was a success. We also noticed that just about every single person was wearing jeans/pants. Don’t they realize that it is super hot and humid here?! I don’t see how they survive wearing jeans when I was basically dying while wearing shorts. If they weren’t wearing long pants, I noticed that a lot of younger guys were wearing board shorts/a swim suit. That, along with the numerous amounts of surf-style shops, makes it feel like we are near a beach. I still haven’t figured that one out yet. I’m really excited to go explore more tomorrow!... and yes, I’m thinking about trying to fit in tomorrow and wearing my tank top and board shorts while I wander aimlessly around town.
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