The first word that comes to mind to describe Liberia: Hot.
After “hot” come words like “small,” “familiar,” and “unlabeled.”
The thing I’m feeling the most is definitely the heat. This week is over 90 degrees each day and it’s something I’m definitely not used to. The humidity, combined with the inability to escape into anywhere air conditioned make for a sweaty, exhausting introduction to the country. I’m sure I’ll get more accustomed to it eventually, but for now, I’m simply hot. I managed to take a shower today with zero intentional heat (a “cold” shower) and still come out a little overheated. They don’t have a second faucet on anything here. It’s just the one that spits out water of whatever temperature it has access to. Usually, it’s lukewarm, but this morning I almost burned myself.
Liberia is a small town in the northwest part of Costa Rica with a population of only about 45,000 ticos (what Costa Ricans call themselves). It’s laid out in a neat grid with a single main street. None of the streets have real names and none of the buildings have numbers. This means that every location is described relative to somewhere else. For instance, I live 50 meters east of the Hotel Riviera. The Projects Abroad office is 100 meters north and 50 meters west of the central plaza. And on and on. For us extranjeros (foreigners) who are new to the area, it makes finding things a bit…interesting.
My first business day here started with a walking tour of the city. It’s only about a five-minute walk from my house to the center of the city and I think anything in the area is only about 20 minutes away, tops. We saw things like the bank, bus stations, supermarkets, important cafés and lots of other landmarks. It shouldn’t take too long to get down the basics.
Like any good Catholic Latin American city, the city center is the church. I learned that all Catholic churches in Costa Rica face west (which helps with my sense of direction), but I have no clue why. If anyone knows, feel free to enlighten me. The central plaza seems to be a common place to hang out for teens and young adults. Based on my conversations with other volunteers, there’s not a whole lot else to do here. One of the hotels has a swimming pool where volunteers go during the day and there’s a movie theater too, but there’s only so many good movies.
The opposite of my experience in Buenos Aires, Liberia goes to sleep early. Whereas Bs.As. is just getting started at 11 pm, the streets of Liberia are almost empty by about 8pm. Part of this might have to do with the sun. Costa Rica doesn’t observe daylight savings and is, in my opinion, in the “wrong” time zone. The sun is up by 5:30am and sets before 6 pm. Costa Rica appears much more the “early to bed, early to rise” type of culture. But don’t expect to get errands done during the lunch hour. The city shuts down as everyone disappears to cook at home or eat lunch at a local soda (a small food vendor that sells cheaper local food).
What’s nice about a town this small is the familiarity of people with one another. If you’re trying to find someone’s shop, you can refer to them by name and lots of people in the area know who they are. Everybody seems to know everybody and it’s nice to have everything so close by. My only fear is going crazy if the town gets too small. I s’pose that’s why all the volunteers travel each weekend.