Death Rodeo….

We were treated to an unexpected experience while in Nosara. On Thursday night, we went to Ponchos for dinner, best guac ever, to find no one there… The place is pretty popular, so we didn’t know what was going on. We sat at the bar, and met the local kids that run the place, well, they look local, but the are actually from Vegas, and there dad is a shaper who shaped with Dick Catri in Hawaii, shapes a sick fish… how do you go from shaping in Hawaii to living in Vegas??? That sounds shitty to me. Anyways, Curt, son of the shaper, told us that everyone was in Nosara for the rodeo. That it lasts for three days, gets progressively violent and that someone dies every year, usually a drunk gringo. We were sold, and made plans to go the next night. First off, this is not a traditional states rodeo, maybe from the wild west, but not the PBR. There are two types of tickets, one regular stands seats, 2000 colones (4 bucks) or you can sit on the fence for 1000 colones. Now the rules for everything in Costa are different, like the lane lines are suggestions, well, in a rodeo in Nosara, fence seats mean either on the fence or in the ring, you choose. And in the ring doesn’t mean spectate, it means participate. So to sum it up, you have a bull with a rider, two guys on horses to lasso the bull after the rider eats it, 10 wasted folks running around the ring trying to slap the bull, oh and the local dog that likes barking at both the bulls and the horses… recipe for fun.

We were drinking imperial, headache in a can beer, and chilling in the seats. Andrew wanted to sit on the fence, but we talked him out of it. First few bulls were status quo, for this type of event, people rode bulls, fell off, scrambled for the fence, dove under, then the other participants ran towards then away from an annoyed bull, the folks on the fence took every opportunity to kick the bulls as he ran by. Oh, there was also La Plata Azul, an 8 piece horn and drum band that played tunes during the whole thing. They were introduced before every bull.

The fifth bull was different, he was bucking wild when the rider was trying to mount. Took an extra five minutes to get him out. He came out charging, definitely the largest bull we had seen and also quite mean. The rider didn’t handle the third jump very well and on the forth was thrown vertical, flipping forward over the bull at least 10 feet off the ground, the bull stood five feet, and he cleared the bull by a solid five feet. His forward flip stopped half way then the ground abruptly landed on the small of his neck. He then bounced off the ground and it was very apparent that his senses and control was gone. He landed limp. I have never seen anyone knocked out so totally before, boxers always seem to tense up for a minute, this guy was limp. The bull charged off towards the fence, and everyone realized that immediately that this guy was in serious trouble. 10 folks, fans and clowns alike ran in to take the rider to safety. They had the rider picked up, his head was swinging and the bull charged the group. The folks dropped the guy and the bull ran him over. The process repeated and this time the folks got the rider to the fence, bull charged, dropped the rider, bull ran over him again. The got back to the rider and slid him through the fenced. That is all we know, not sure if the guy ended up in the ground or with a bad headache.