Fiestas de Santa Rosa

Wow! I don't even know where to begin. From roughly our first week here in Costa Rica, we've been hearing many tales about the fiestas that can be found throughout Guanacaste. However, there's really one festival that is touted and bragged about more than any other: Santa Rosa Last week, we were sucked in to the tornado of Guanacastecan debauchery that is la fiesta de Santa Rosa.



Imagine a cross between a full-on rodeo, a NC State Homecoming tailgate, and the biggest house party the local authorities would let slide. All of these events combined make up this fiesta. We started out at 8 am, wandering up and down the dirt streets of Santa Rosa looking for someone to rent horses from (why do we need horses? to go get the bulls of course). Fortunately we had a nice Tica friend to help us negotiate the cost of horse rental down by 30 percent.


We got our trusty steeds rented and set of for what, unbeknownst to us, was going to be the longest (and best populated) horse ride of our lives. I say best populated because joining us to go collect the bulls were about 1000 of our closest costa rican friends; on horseback, on fourwheelers, on dirtbikes, even hanging out the back of shabby pickup trucks. Us and this motley crew traveled for about 3 hours on horseback, stopping of course to buy beer from the roadside beer trucks, and hitch our horses for a drink or two at the local establishments that we happened to pass by. The road ended for us at a giant hacienda with a brass band playing, a team of ladies selling fried chicken out of plastic tubs, and reliably, requisite beer stands. After a few hours of this, the throng of people (somehow without receiving any sort of perceivable signal) all hopped back on their horse (or whatever, we did meet one guy riding a donkey) and started traveling back the way we came. However this time, this crew of people was herding the bulls that would be used for the bull-fights of the evening.

So to rewind the first three hours of the trip, we took the same 3 hour ride back, stopping again at the local watering hole along the way. On the way back however, our horses (read: Miah's horse) must have discovered her love for a good chase because we did a lot more galloping than anything else. Nothing like racing an 8 year old costa rican on horseback down a dirt road full of people all traveling a different pace.

Once we got back and got our horses returned apparently we had completed the prelude to the day as it was time for the real fiesta to start. There were purportedly hours more of parties and bullfights (we had friends who came home well after midnight) however we didn't have the steam to stay in the running, so we headed home to cook a yummy dinner.

Unfortunately for them, two passers-by (Jessica and Hugo, down from California) happened to be pulled in to this adventure as well. Little did they know when they were planning their visit that this would be how they spent their saturday. It wasn't till sunday morning that we all collectively groaned and whimpered our way out of our respective beds that we realized how sore an 8 hour horseback adventure could really make you.

What are you doing on thursday night?
Team Wander