[quote]January, 2017. Good ole me was in Costa Rica with the family on vacation and on our last full day there we received a tip from a group of American expatriates about an event we HAD to attend. It was a good ole fashioned Costa Rican rodeo. My father and I returned to the house we where staying in and pitched the idea too my family. Suffice to say, not many people where not too interested. So my father, my brother closest to me in age, and I jumped in the car to drive to the rodeo. Most roads in Costa Rica are kinda eh, but this one was a new level of eh. After 45 minutes of driving over about ten thousand potholes and a ravine in the middle of the road. We arrived. We jumped out of the car in tempate Costa Rica to be immediately greeted by a local who asked us for $10 for protection of our car during the event. We gave him ten dollars We walk up to a chain crossing the road, a woman on the other side of the chain asks us for $12 per person for the entrance fee. Note, this is a chain accros a road with literally nothing on either side for 40 ft. We could have walked around. But we forked over $36. Now we approach the “arena” which is little more than a 12 ft wooden post fence surrounding the town square the size of two soccer pitches. We walk around the arena to take in the sights. Food stalls with dubious entrées entitled ‘monkey meat’. Acres and acres of churros(my main reason for going) and the oldest most rickety carnival equipment I’ve ever seen. After completing a full rotation. We climbed up the fence and found a nice perch on the top rung. Inside the arena where approximately 65 Costa Rican youths who stayed in the ring the whole time. Why? Who knows? But it was funny watching them run from the bulls. The cowboys themselves where pure professionals. They never got thrown and they rode those bulls for what seemed like an eternity. After about 8 cowboy/bull combos, my father looked at me and said. Hey HoTh, why don’t you hop down there and I’ll take your picture? I complied. After securing the photo, my brother climbed back up the fence, but I lingered. Taking in the air and the sights. An announcement was let loose over the field. “Por favor, salgan del arena, estamos liberando el torro sin jinete. Courtesia de Pepsi.” I don’t speak a lick of Spanish so that was completely pointless to me so I ignored it. What it meant was please leave the arena, we are releasing a riderless bull, courtesy of Pepsi. That’s what they did, and for the first time all night, there was only one person in the arena. Me. That bull swept after me with a burning rage and threw me 5 meters through the air, like a rag doll. But wait. There’s more. He decided that I needed seconds. So he picked me up off the ground and sent me flying again. At that point the locals intervened and got me out of the arena. They told me to go to the med tent and the whole time i was there, the ex Americans -blam!- us to go there were flirting with the nurses. [/quote]i’m getting tired of typing on my phone. Long story short, I had a broken arm. Total separation of the arm and hand at the wrist. All that, and I never got my churro and I don’t have a scar. I feel cheated.