Report from Nosara: The Fiestas

Photo by Michael Galliard

Note: This week Alina Trejos joins us on the Harmony Blog with her first Report from Nosara. Alina grew up in Costa Rica’s capital of San Jose but moved to Nosara to work with the Harmony. In her posts, she’ll share some of her experiences in her first year in Guanacaste.

Before coming to Nosara I’d never been to a rodeo. I was very excited to go. The fiestas have several attractions, the “chinamos”— little shacks where people sell typical food and drinks, a couple of bars, an open air disco next to a beautiful tree and even karaoke, but the biggest attraction at the fiestas are the bulls. Rodeo Tico style is a lot of fun, brave young men and a couple of women from Guanacaste ride huge bulls, as in any other rodeo, but once the bull is free from the rider it starts chasing people…Yes, in Nosara before every rider comes out to do their show there are several Ticos and some tourists, waiting for the bull inside the ring. These men want a chance to challenge a 500 kilos bull after he’s done with his rider. Some of these thrill seekers are drinking beer in the middle of the ring wearing flip flops. Others are chatting looking at the crowd for the girl they want to impress, and the rest are planning their escape route towards the fence to save themselves from being creamed by the bull.
The public, seated on top of the fence or at the stands, cheers and screams watching the show, every time someone gets hit by the bull or manages to escape uninjured, the crowd goes crazy. Also several calves are let loose inside the ring, more men go inside the ring to have some fun provoking the animals to chase them, when they can´t dodge the calves, the men lay on the ground hoping to have a good story to tell.
After the show is over and everyone has taken pictures and enjoyed watching relatives and friends be part of the action, the band starts playing at the open air disco and it’s time to continue the party dancing salsa, merengue and bachata.
The fiestas are a major celebration in town and you can be sure about one thing, during fiestas everybody goes to the rodeo and everybody has a great time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 30th, 2014 at 7:00 am. It is filed under Costa Rica, Harmony Hotel, Nosara. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.