Photo: Toxic Environment Cow (Costa Rica 2008)

Toxic Environment Cow

Where: San Jose, Costa Rica
When: Afternoon, June 5th 2008

During my visit to Costa Rica in June 2008, San Jose was holding a CowParade public art exhibit. Dozens of artists had decorated cows, placed throughout the city, in ways that were sometimes beautiful, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes expressed a poignant social or political message. We made it our mission to look for these cows wherever we went. This cow, with it's gas mask, green hooves, and carbon emissions statistics printed in green, warned passers-by against creating a toxic environment.

La Heredia

Heredia was much like San Jose. Exteriors were dirty concrete and rusted metal, with the junctures between the two often neglected. To say there was no insulation would be an understatement – a Missouri rainstorm would whip in through every crack.

We were assigned a scavenger hunt in the Mercado. They divided us into groups to look for items from a list, which we were forbidden to show anyone - we were meant to ask people where we could buy things and how they were used. All of our things (with one exception) turned out to be herbs and spices, so we found ourselves bothering the same people again and again.

A group of exhausted high schoolers need some sort of authority figure to maintain organization, so when it came time to eat lunch, in particular, there were arguments. For about half an hour we bickered over where to eat, as half the group wanted cheap, authentic food – the kind most prevalent in the Mercado itself, while the other half couldn’t be persuaded to go anywhere near the street vendors.

The group finally split and I stayed with the Mercado group. The little bar we ate at probably left us more exposed to thieves and pickpockets than any other place we went to on the trip, but I wasn’t at all worried about the food. They prepared it right in front of us, and meat and cheese and cilantro smells wafted over the dirty glass that separated the kitchen from the counter. My first full and real Costa Rican meal - Pollo con Gallo Pinto - was so delicious that I even ordered a cheese tortilla to finish it off.

- Journal, 06/06/08

Photo: The Mercado of Heredia.