One vivid memory from my time in San Jose, the capitol city of Costa Rica, is a little panaderia (bakery) where we stopped for pastries. There were so many little golden baked goodies lining the display cases, some with a fruit filling, some with meat, others with cheese. And I, being on a diet and not yet knowing that food allergies existed, decided not to get anything. I was being healthy.
I never thought that one of my "I-wish-I-would'ves" would be indulging in a pastry from that very panaderia. I don't remember the name of the bakery, I wouldn't be able to tell you how to get there and it was probably much smaller and less majestic than I remember. And yet still, I found myself, during that week before our trip to CR, craving pastries from a panaderia. Specifically, churros.
I coerced my boss into a trip to the Mexican market in town, La Michoacana, for pastries. We had been once before and snagged fresh churros, but this time, the churros were stale. It was a disappointing trip, but a trip that made me even more determined to find the perfect churro in Costa Rica.
Unfortunately, churros, the little sticks of goodness that they are, are not a big thing in Costa Rica. I was even hard pressed to find a panaderia. I found one, Panaderia di Paris, but it was trying to be a French bakery and so didn't have anything resembling a churro. We found two others, but no churros there either. We even found a restaurant that was named something to the effect of "Crepes and Churros Cafe," but they said their churro machine was broken. (I should mention that I didn't realize you needed a machine to make churros.)
About halfway into our trip, Husband and I found ourselves at a bar, overlooking the bay, him drinking a cold Imperial and me an icy pina coloda, with a bartender that was from Minosota.
About to give up on the search, I half heartedly asked if she knew what a churro was and where I might find one. Lucky I did because she was the person that told us about Fiestas Civicas de Villareal.
I'm not sure exactly the explanation behind the Fiestas Civicas, but here's what I gathered from watching and talking to people during our trip: Every town in Guanecaste has a celebration like this, called a Fiestas Civicas. The biggest part of the festival in the town of Villareal is a man-made, wooden arena with man-made, wooden bleachers.
People pay to sit in the bleachers, where they hold on for dear life. They also stand around the arena and climb up on the fence-like walls and take a free seat.
Inside the arena, where the bull riding takes place, local men run around and drink and act crazy while they wait for the bulls to be released. Anyone can do this, no sobriety requirements. When the bull and rider are released, the rider tries to stay on as long as possible. When he is thrown, or grabs onto the fence around the arena and pulls himself up to sit with the crowd, the other men chase the bull. When it stops, they run past it to get it to chase them.
When the bull runs up close to the fence, where people are sitting, they lift their feet out of it's way and then tap it on the backside as it passes. Then the bull is ushered into a holding area and the whole process starts over.
All of this takes place in the middle of carnival rides, bumper cars, back street gambling stations, beer gardens and food vendors and a whole bunch of people.
And it is usually followed with dancing at the town hall. But the important thing here, besides the mixing and mingling with so many people from a different culture, is that one of those food vendors was a churro stand.
And so, this is how I came to be standing in the middle of a Spanish carnival in Central America, underneath wooden manmade bleachers, holding a beer and eating the best caramel filled churro I've ever tasted. Afterwards, we went to the dance hall, which I think was more of a bar than a town hall, and listened to live music (the singer was latino dancing the whole time) and watched locals dance.
We even went back a few nights later, on a Saturday, to take my parents and see the bull riding (because we were too late the first night to see anything) and of course to get another churro. It was good. It was fun, but it wasn't the same.
I don't know if it was a less touristy night the first go, or if it was the alcohol, but there was something special about that first night, as if I felt vindicated for missing out on those pastries at the panaderia in San Jose all those years ago. Either way, I'm thankful for a good memory to replace that "Wish-I-would've."
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