san jose costa rica universities
The best Latin American city?
I am an American college student who is majoring in Spanish. I would really love to study abroad to Latin America, and my university has many options in different countries. In your opinion, which of these cities is the best: Arica (Chile), Lima (Peru), San Jose (costa rica), Quito (Ecuador), or Viña del Mar (Chile)? The more details, the better! Thanks for the input and have a Merry Christmas!
Discard Arica (very small and limited) and the other 4 will be a tough choice.
San Jose is the only city mentioned that I haven’t been to. But I know for sure that it’s the best choice in Central America, less expensive than Lima or Viña del mar. Tropical weather beautiful landscape and a short 60 miles to either the Pacific Ocean or to the Caribbean sea, You can go to the top of a mountain and view both sides. There are many adventure tourism going on and it’s safe!
San Jose is at an altitude of 1,200 meters above sea level and has 57 thousand inhabitants.
Quito must be as expensive as San Jose and even if it’s in the tropics it has a cooler weather than San Jose for it is at an altitude of 2,850 meters above sea level and a population of 1.4 million It’s a very beautiful city in between mountains. Their spanish is better pronounced than Costa Rica or Chile and you can get the chance of visiting Galapagos Islands and some beautiful cities in the highlands like Cuenca.
Lima is the most cosmopolitan city of the mentioned with 8 million inhabitants and is on the pacific coast. It’s huge and sometimes chaotic, it can be expensive or cheap depending on the place you live but obviously, the better the more it costs (maybe just like in the USA). The spanish spoken here has the least distortion grammatically speaking. In Spain they have a strong distinctive accent just like the British have in comparison to the USA, but peruvians as well as Ecuador, speak without distorting it. Here you also have the chance of getting to know many historic places and one of the 7 modern wonders, Macchu Picchu. Plus all the comodities of a big city with all the food franchises (KFC, Burger King, Mc Donalds, TG Friday’s, Tony Roma’s, Starbuck’s, Bennihana’s, Pizza Hut, Little Ceasar’s, Papa John’s, Subway’s) along with a diverse local cuisine (Outstanding!).
Viña del Mar is a pintoresque city also in the pacific ocean very fun in the summer Dec-Feb (also very crowded) they have a famous International music festival worth going to and a great winery country with the best economy of all, that is why it’s a little more expensive than Peru. It’s very safe and easy to travel either by bus or train (it’s a long narrow strip). My only 2 No-No’s are the food is not as tasty as the rest and the spanish they speak in the streets is very distorted. But they have also all the comodities of any big city. The population of Valparaiso-Viña-Reñaca is around 600 thousand and the weather is prety much like San Francisco California.
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