Aero: Sarah Warner – Costa Rica 2016 – City Life

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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When I think of Costa Rica/Nicaragua and “city life” the first thing that comes to my mind is the driving. I think every time I was in a motor vehicle in Alajuela I was scared for my life. I told my host brother Daniel countless times that I could never drive where he lives (he would drive us to where we needed to be each morning).  People in the United States typically honk their horn if they are upset or scared.  In Costa Rica, there were mad honks, friendly honks, honks to say hello, and whatever else people felt the need to honk their horn about.  Another thing we learned is that unlike the United States where pedestrians have the right away, in Costa Rica pedestrians never have the right away so we had to be very careful when crossing streets.

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Sarah Warner

The Nicaragua city life was slightly different than the Costa Rican.  For example, we learned the history behind all the buildings being different colors and how wealthy families previously owned them.  In Costa Rica however, most of the homes and buildings were the same color.  Also, the “street life” by the hotel we were staying at got pretty wild at night, and when we stayed in Costa Rica that wasn’t so much of a thing. 

When I arrived back home, my brothers asked me how the city of Alajuela was and the first word I thought of was “chill”.  Sure the driving was crazy, but the people were very laid back.  It was really neat to see so many people just hanging out in the park during the day.  Also, it was super easy to just walk to get the things that you needed. One thing that we saw that I do not see much living in a small town was homeless people and beggars. It made me really sad to see people in the street, or having to turn down the poor people begging for money. I also felt really bad for all the stray dogs walking around everywhere.  We learned that Costa Rica has an over population of dogs and no one to take care of them, so there were many dogs simply roaming around the city. Living two weeks in cities really opened my eyes to city life in general, and I am thankful I got such an experience. This being said, I had a ton of fun visiting the cities and learning so much about them, but I absolutely loved the days that we were active and hiking.  Needless to say, I am more of an outdoorsy, open-terrain type of girl.

Sarah Warner
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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