A Bunch of Bull?

Each year the final five days of January are designated as La Fiesta del Coco, a celebration of the Costa Rican cowboy and one of the more legitimate excuses to have lots of loud music, much pounding of drums, parades with horses tap dancing down the beach, bull riding competitions and the consumption of vast quantities of beer. 

The fair grounds (a couple of vacant, dusty fields) are converted to a carnival-like site with bumper cars, a tilt-a-whirl ride, cotton candy dispensers and food tents.  As night time descends upon the village, the festival site comes to life and in short order transforms into a virtual beehive of activity.  A mechanical bull surrounded by huge air mattresses is the favorite activity of children large and small as the climax of each ride is when they are flung from the saddle, tumble through the air and bounce on the mattresses in a tangled mass of arms, legs and laughter.

The highlight of this festival, however, and the real reason for it to exist, is the bull riding competition.  The circular arena is considerably less than half the size of a football field.  It is surrounded by rickety bleachers made of rough hewn lumber that is mostly lashed together with twine.  The bleachers rise about 20 rows in height and funnel down to a wooden fence on the perimeter of the arena.  There are only 2 categories of admission.  You either sit in the bleachers or you sit on (or stand along) the fence.  If you are standing along the fence, it is MOST advisable to be on the outside rather than the inside.  This is where the entertainment gets to be “interactive”.

As the bull and rider burst into the arena, those spectators, the brave and/or crazy ones sitting on top of the fence,  run into the arena and dash from side to side in an effort to tantalize and torment the bull, the objective being to make him angrier and more violent in his romp about the ring.  Those spectators who enter the fray are, quite naturally, at great risk of bodily injury from finding themselves on the pointed end of the bull’s horns or the bottom side of his hooves.  It is the obvious danger inherent in this spectator participation which thrills the crowd even more than the guy trying to maintain his position atop of the bull. 

As the 6 piece brass band continues to blare through the dust, the bravery of the crowd on the fence (fueled by much beer) increases as the evening wears on.   It seems the most aggressive bulls are not introduced until the latter part of the evening when the combination of bad-bull and inebriated spectator-participants generates steady activity in the first aide booth.

There is something bordering on the confluence of comedy and potential tragedy that makes watching 20 or so loco Ticos running around inside this fenced arena with an irate, long horned bull strangely entertaining for a brief period of time.  Unless you happen to be a Tico, in which case, you can never get enough of the thrill derived from watching your friends flirt with catastrophe as they run, stumble, fall, roll and dive under the fence or scramble to the top of it in their attempts to avert an ambulance ride due to a personal encounter with the bull.   As many of these fun seekers have never been to a movie theatre nor ever had a TV, creating their own form of entertainment with what they have available gets to be an art, in and of itself.  This is, after all, Costa Rica…..Pura Vida!