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Bullring

Photos of a small village bullfighting arena in Monteverdi, Costa Rica.
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Entering the arena. On my first visit, the elementary school had just let out and the kids were running around the arena playing. Note the soccer goal.
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Entering the arena. On my first visit, the elementary school had just let out and the kids were running around the arena playing. Note the soccer goal.

Bullring

  • I spent 12 days traveling in Costa Rica last November. The Costa Rican landscape is peppered with small villages. A typical village center has a church and a soccer field, and further out there is, not uncommonly, a large round cake of a building, a bull fighting arena.
  • Everyone who has been there will tell you Costa Rica is a beautiful country. Although I took around 500 pictures while I was there, I didn't feel particularly inspired. I think I was just too busy relaxing. However, towards the end of my visit, I spent a couple of days at a hotel in Monteverdi, and there was a bullring nearby. It captured my attention, and I visited it a couple of times to get these photos.
  • The ticket window.
  • I got the impression from a local informant that the arena was not much used any more, at least, not for bullfighting.
  • Emergency entrance.
  • On my first visit the big door was standing open. The next day it was closed. But I found another way in.
  • Near the restrooms behind the arena, one of the corrugated panels had been removed.
  • This the main entrance, standing open. To the left, over the wall, are the cattle pens.
  • The other side of the big door next to the emergency entrance.
  • The view from the stands.
  • In the stands.
  • Under the stands.
  • Small table at the back of the stands.
  • The stands are separated into different sections by welded rebar grills. This one was decorated with a large bug formed of rebar and a bit of pipe and a fitting.
  • This is how the bulls get inside.
  • The corrals are a maze of posts and planks.
  • The passage to the arena. The grass attests to how few bulls have gone this way recently.
  • Top of the bull's gate.
  • The bull's chute. The door opens into the arena.
  • Entering the arena. On my first visit, the elementary school had just let out and the kids were running around the arena playing. Note the soccer goal.

  • 414226nessak

    on January 3, 2011

    I really love this image -- especially the sky. It feels like impending doom. in the best way possible.

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