Yet another corrida

Last weekend kicked off our fiestas patronales (every town has a patron saint and hosts a festival in their honor) but this weekend boasted the main events.  As my regular followers know, I’ve attended a corrida de toros (very amateur rodeo) and a corrida de patos (duck decapitating).  Saturday I had the privilege to attend a corrida de burros.  Unlike the other two, this one was not a misnomer and was exactly what the translation suggests: a donkey race.  I swear I don’t make these up.  I didn’t have my camera but this one is pretty easy to picture.  Take eight of your average donkeys and find eight men crazy enough to ride them.  Then close off two blocks of a main road in the center of your town and voilà: you’re ready.  The format was a practice run with everyone and then they got paired off into quarterfinal groups.  Winners advance to the semi and so forth.  So the two donkeys would line up behind a rope and on the count of three, they’re off!  Except for the undeniable fact that they were indeed donkeys.  That means that any number of things happened when “TRES!” was yelled and the rope dropped.  Some of the more common responses were stand there and do nothing, run the wrong direction or, if you were lucky, actually run the correct direction for the 75 meters.  And when I say “run”, I really mean trot along as fast as a donkey can which of course isn’t very fast at all.  Other eventful outcomes include a donkey that started to run only then to decide that it’s time to use the baño, a donkey bucking wildly, a donkey running off the street and into the grass towards us spectators and a donkey falling and rolling over his rider (don’t fret, I’m sure he only bruised a couple ribs.  And his ego.)  All in all, it was one of the more ridiculous things I’ve seen in my Nica tenure so naturally I loved it.  Feel free to suggest other corridas that would be interesting and I’ll bring them up to management!