Liberia and Santa Cruz

27/06/09 - 30/06/09

From Santa Teresa, it was a long journey to our next port of call in Liberia. We took our first bus at 7.15am, catching the next one at 8.30am to Paquera in order to get the cheap ferry back across to Puntarenas. We jumped straight into a taxi hoping to be on time for a bus to Liberia, but we arrived about ten minutes too late, and there wouldn't be another one for 2 1/2 hours. Luckily for us, however, our taxi driver was in the know, because he told us that he could take us to another bus stop about 20km away, where more buses heading to Liberia would be passing through. We decided to chance it, and although we still had to wait about 40 minutes for a bus, we arrived in Liberia at around 3.30pm (if we had waited at the first bus stop we would have only been half an hour away from Puntarenas).

Liberia is the capital of the province of Guanacaste, which is very different to the majority of Costa Rica. There isn't the tropical feel here that there is in the south, so it is a lot drier and you don't see nearly as many coconut or banana trees :) The land is also very flat and home to several huge cattle ranches and farms. The cattle are the pride of Guanacaste and several rodeos are held throughout the year in various locations. Liberia is known as the White City (ciudad blanca) apparently due to the fact that a lot of the buildings there are white. Also, in the past, the roads were made of white gravel and the people used to dress in white because of the heat. Liberia is also a very cultural city, being the birthplace of several Costa Rican poets and philosophers.

The main attraction in Liberia, apart from the main square and church, is the sabanero museum (sabenero is the local word for cowboy). We were on our way there, when a house with lots of signs outside caught our interest. The owner spotted us and invited us in to look at his vast collection of old items from the area that he has collected from friends and family since he was a child. He showed us a collection of rifles that were used in 1856 against the American filibuster William Walker, who tried to conquer the country. I say tried, because the Costa Ricans managed to defeat him, and the airport in San Jose is named after one of the key figures involved in that battle, Juan Santamaria. Obviously, we didn't mention that my surname is Walker, just in case it upset him :) We told him that we were on our way to the museum, but he told us that it was tiny and that it had even less on display than he did, so we didn't end up going there after all. While in Liberia, we also saw part of a religious festival, which the locals called an evangelist crusade. It was nothing too heavy, just some religious songs, which a young dance troupe performed to. One guy also sang some religious rap, which Vic enjoyed. I didn't understand most if it :)

Other memorable moments of our couple of days in Liberia were 1) watching the Confederations Cup final, Brazil vs the USA. I couldn't believe that Brazil were 2-0 down at half-time and for some reason I couldn't bear to see the US win (probably because they had kicked Spain out of the competition), but Brazil didn't disappoint and they came back in the second half to win by a spectacular 3 goals to 2. Wahoo!!! And 2) finding out that there had been a military coup in Honduras, which after Nicaragua, is the next country we are thinking of going to. We will have to keep an eye on how things progress to know whether or not it will be safe to go there. Hopefully things will have settled down in a month or so.

From Liberia we went an hour south to Santa Cruz for a couple of nights, another of the main towns in Guanacaste and home to the Punto Guancasteco, a typical folklore dance. Unfortunately, you can only see this dance performed during the local festivals. The church is very modern here, as the former one was destroyed in an earthquake, but one of the old towers is still standing and provides a stark contrast to the new church. There are plans to demolish the existing church and rebuild it according to the former design, but who knows when that will happen.

It's a shame that there were no festivals for us to see at this time of year, as Santa Cruz is one of the best places in Costa Rica to witness typical folklore tradition, but we still enjoyed our time there, and found the people very friendly and the food excellent. And to Vic's immense joy he was able to play basketball with a few local guys one evening, which he thoroughly enjoyed, but which unfortunately left him with two huge blisters on the soles of his feet, which didn't make our journey to Nicoya the next day all that pleasant.