Nicoya and a day out in Caballito

01/07/09 - 05/07/09

From Santa Cruz, it was further south again to Nicoya, about half an hour away, but which seemed like an eternity to Vic, as he was suffering badly with his blisters :( Nicoya is home to the second oldest church in Costa Rica, the church of San Blas. The parish was founded in 1522 and the church itself was completed in 1644, but as with most of the impressive buildings in Costa Rica it was damaged by an earthquake in 1822 and restored in 1831. It is a beautiful white(ish) building, and in good condition, and inside there are several interesting objects dating back hundreds of years. Among them was a chair, which had been used to carry the priest around town as far back as the 15th Century and a set of three bells dating from the 18th and 19th Centuries. I was most interested to read about the clock, but I think that was only because it had been made in England :)

While in Nicoya, we happened to see a poster advertising a rodeo in a town called Caballito from the 3rd-5th July. We had originally been planning to leave for Nicaragua before the weekend, but we decided to extend our stay in Costa Rica, to at least see one typical festival, but Nicoya being such a small town, it's not usually a place you would spend 5 days in, but it was good to take it easy and not do much for a few days, and it gave us time to catch up on the blog again (although we are still behind). We also saw another poster advertising a cultural event in Nicoya itself on the evening of the 2nd July. It was being hosted by the Nueva Acropolis organisation and we decided to go along to watch. Nueva Acropolis (New Acropolis) is actually a world-wide organisation, which was set up by an Argentinian philosopher in 1957 and is now active in more than forty countries across the globe. The event that night was the culmination of a few different performances by mainly teenagers and one man playing traditional music on his guitar. One young boy read out two pieces of prose that he had written himself, and another group performed the story of Cinderella. Afterwards everyone was invited inside for a bite to eat and something to drink, so we made a small donation, as the event had been free.

Friday 3rd July was the first day of the three-day-long festival in Caballito, which we had so far gathered could be reached by bus from the terminal in Nicoya. We roughly knew that there was a bus at 11am, but that would get us there way to early, as the first event would not start until about 4pm, so we decided to aim for a later on. We got to the terminal at around 1.30pm and Vic started to ask random people if they knew what time the bus to Caballito would leave, and he got a different answer almost everytime. 2pm, 2.30pm, 3pm, I'm not sure, I don't know!!! He also asked every bus driver that pulled into the terminal if he was going to Caballito, all of them said no, and none of them could tell him when the bus was due. It was extremely frustrating. When it still hadn't showed by 2.30pm and he asked a few more people, we were certain that the bus would leave at 3pm, so we were surprised and disappointed to find out, when we asked again just before 3pm, that the bus had left 15 minutes ago. We could not believe how unlucky we had been.

We tried again the next day, and this time managed to catch it with plenty of time to spare. An hour and a half and 20km of bumpy road later, we were in Caballito, a tiny village of only 50 inhabitants. There are more cows here than people, and it was a joy to behold. The only problem was is there were no buses returning to Nicoya that day, nor were there any places for us to stay. We got chatting to one of the men working there for the festival and he said that he might be able to lend us a mattress if it came to it, a prospect that I wasn't all that keen on. To make matters worse, there weren't even any buses the next day either as it was a Sunday, so although we were happy to have made it there and we were looking forward to the festival, there was a worry in the back of my mind as to how we were going to back to our hotel where all of our things were.

Although the programme for that day was due to begin at 4pm, we didn't see anything happening until about 7pm that evening, but we had lots to keep us occupied in the meantime. We had got chatting to a woman in the bus on the way, and we saw her and a few friends in the only bar in town a couple of hours later. They invited us to join them for a few beers, and even invited us to their house to celebrate their daughter's 13th birthday. Patricia (the mother) had bought a birthday cake in Nicoya earlier that day, but they didn't have any candles or matches, so Vic and I decided to go and get some to make the cake complete. One of the men, Nargo, who used to be the advisor to the Minister of Culture, got out his guitar and sang a few songs for the birthday girl, one of which moved me to tears (Vic even managed to catch this on camera but didn't actually notice I was crying). Although the family did not have much (there were no birthday presents for example) they shared all they had with us, food, drink and birthday cake. It was such a nice afternoon.

When the rodeo was finally underway, the atmosphere in the ring was buzzing, as the 12 'cowboys' got ready to mount their bull and see how long they could stay on for. None of them lasted very long. We were lucky to see the famous 'El Cerriche' who has been undefeated the last 50 times he has been mounted. His 'cowboy' was the equally famous 'Negro Chorotega' but he didn't last any longer than the others. When it was all over, we decided to try and hitch a lift back to Nicoya rather than spend a night on a mattress in the middle of nowhere. Vic was very brave and asked several people passing by if they would take us, and finally someone agreed to give us a ride for a small contribution, which we were more than happy to give. And so we climbed into the back of a pick-up truck and made our way back to Nicoya under a night sky full of stars. It was the perfect end to what had been a brilliant and unforgettable day, full of kind and interesting people and new and exciting experiences.