Costa Rica Rose: The Rest of the Story!

Before we get to the incredible Ox Cart Parade, there a couple other things we want to share about the San Ramon Festival.

While waiting for the parade to begin we started watching these men feed sugar cane through a machine and create a juice which they were selling at one of the food spots. The man on the left spoke a little some English and was very helpful at explaining the process to us. He was also giving himself bee therapy! As I was watching the process of pressing sugar cane, I noticed that he was irritating a bee and then sticking it on his arm to be stung! Of course, we asked him about it and he said that all the bees around the sweet sugar cane gave him an opportunity to be stung which helped with some pain he had in his hip! Although aware of bee therapy we had never experienced the process.

This very interesting gentlemen talked to us at length about the sugar cane process, unfortunately it was all in Spanish! He didn't seem to mind that we didn't understand and entertained us for quite some time!

One last note before we inundate you with photos of the parade. We are very impressed with how Ticos can create what they need no matter what the situation. An example of this is the temporary sink and towel containers we noticed that are available for people to use in many locations around the temporary structures.

Now for the parade!

When we first arrived in San Ramon the day of the parade the road was empty and closed off. On the schedule we had the parade was to begin at 10:00 a.m., I think it was about 11:30 when things started to pass by and we were at the very beginning. We had been told there were about 200 ox carts and, as we are not good at stand still, we decided to follow the parade backwards to the end so we could see it all!

The beginning!

The variety of Oxen, carts and Yolks work by the Oxen was endless and Don just kept shooting pictures. I'm posting many of them but actually only a small portion and we hope you enjoy them all!