THE ONION FESTIVAL

Friday, April 24: THE ONION FESTIVAL

I’ve just received news that my shipped goods have arrived and will probably be delivered tomorrow. I’ll spend a couple days, I think, putting things in place but spending the nights back at my hotel – I hate to leave this swimming pool – and then move in on Monday. I’m still amazed at the record timing – I expected to be looking for weeks.

Last weekend I read in the paper about an Onion Festival being held in Santa Ana, a town not far from here, so I decided to check it out. “Not far” is a very relative term. All roads (and buses) go to San Jose, the capital, so any trip in a lateral direction involves one bus to SJ, a taxi ride to another bus station, and another bus to wherever one is going. Took me 3 hours to get there. This included a fairly long delay for road construction. There is no national bus line – every city has its own bus company, sometimes more than one, and they are all painted wonderful though different bright colors, and they all have their own bus stations in the capitol.

Once in Santa Ana, I headed down the street toward the noise and crowds, and found myself in a 2-block long strip of onion booths and food booths. I’ve never seen so many onions in one place. See foto. Making my way down the street I encountered, right in the middle of the crowd, a pair of oxen followed by a colorful cart, typical of Costa Rican folk art. There had apparently been a parade of oxcarts earlier, and this was the last one to be heading home. (I had read on the Festival description that there would be a Parade of “Boyeros” but I couldn’t find the word in my trusty dictionary). I will know the next time, and try to arrive in time to see them. I took a few pictures, tasted a few of the food offerings (they were different looking but remarkably similar in taste to USA “festival food.”) Explored around the town a little, but was anxious about returning home before dark – 6 pm promptly – so I hopped a bus back to San Jose and then another to Grecia. The return trip wasn’t quite so long.

I am getting used to the reality that any excursion out of Grecia, whether it be for shopping or pleasure, will involve a good portion of time in transport, often more than half the day. But since I am, without fail, an “event junkie”, I’ll probably spend a good many Sundays crossing the country to visit local Fiestas.