Birthday Bash For Octagenarian Costa Rican Cowboy

Last year sometime a member of my wife's family found out about an uncle that owned a ranch in the north of the country and had a family birthday party each year. This year we were invited as I was in the country and we planned to be there with a sister of my wife and her family. The drive was about 75 miles and out into the northern farmlands up near Nicaragua, we were told that his place was a huge edifice and that he was a millionaire, this had our imagination running wild with visions of Dallas style buildings, when we tried the directions we found a dirt road running over some pretty wild areas with quite alot of trees for this type of farmland and not many houses, after a while we felt lost and the only person we could find to talk to was riding a horse, this tells you what sort of rural community we were travelling in. We continued along the route and the road became more difficult and more wild, but the cowboy on his horse has also mentioned the edifice, we were really interested in this place by now, we drove over a large hill and down a deep valley and then came upon the edifice, it was a group of farm buildings and animal pens. The main buildings were actually for horses and cattle and the large silos for the animal feed, the house was a tiny single story house,( by San Jose standards) and stood amidst the animal pens, we parked up and stumbled across the boulders strewn road and into the well manicured gardens, laid out with a play area for the kids a large lawn area, which had a temporary wooden dance floor on it and a place for the band to set up on, there was flood lighting for all the areas including the large barbecue kitchen and serving area, and candles hanging in baskets in the trees around the area, I was laughing at how small the house was compared to my imagination but for a rural farmer it was huge, most farmers live in a tiny wooden hut with maybe two or three rooms, but this was a fully laid out house but still tiny. The lawn seating area was laid out with tables and chairs for the food and the only problem was it was next to the pig pens and even though they had moved the pigs, the smell was incredible, luckily the wind was blowing so we only got the full blown smell from time to time. We were met by my wife's cousin and then introduced to the old Cowboy himself and he was a sprightly man with his cowboy hat who was in full control of events and had all his faculties, i was glad to see this as my dad has now lost all of his faculties and is 87. He showed us around the place and ten were found an unknown auntie of my wife who was about 80 years old, they had big families in them days, there were 13 members originally, all but 2 are dead. We seated ourselves near the kitchen and they had waiters bringing out food which was mostly home reared barbecued pork, it tasted fantastic and they also were bringing out the beer, great!!. The beer flowed and then a band set up and was playing local cantina music to dance to, I was forced to dance latin style by my sister-in-law, the little girl was playing with the 20-30 second cousins in the play area, we spoke to some of my wife's cousins and found an old boy who spoke perfect english, he had been a high court judge and had learned his English at a fancy school in San Jose. He even had friends in the British Embassy a long time ago. I was drinking rum and coke after the first couple of beers but as the night wore on they ran out of coke and i had rum and sprite and when that ran out i was forced to drink rum and fanta and then rum and water, disgusting, what i do for a good night out. we ate and danced and drank and laughed the night away. It was the best cowboy birthday party i had had in a long time, in fact the only one. It is true this man is a rich man, his lands are now worth millions of dollars and his cattle and pigs fetch huge sums of money, the operation is run by his two able sons, one is a lawyer who works for a local bank and the other is a doctor who runs the importing business in Mexico importing the meat from this farm. But as you know old men never spend their money and this guy probably spends $20 a week but at least the party each year for family and the farm workers is a great blowout for everyone, I have never seen so many cowboy hats together in one place.

More cowboy hats than you can count