Fourth of July in Costa Rica
By Brandon Dane
July 2002
San Jose (Alajuela), Costa Rica
For The Fourth of July, the US Embassy throws a bash at La Cerveceria (The National Brewery) in Alajuela. It starts at 8am – last year I was banging on the gates at 7:58am – and lasts until about 2pm (last call is at about 12:30pm). Booze hounds beware: I was fighting with the BUD girls well into 1pm last year, drinking two at a time.
Everything is free. Free hot dogs, hamburgers, and other junk foods. Beer, wine, and liquor are also free. You have to show your passport – not a copy. Which is retarded because the US Embassy flatly states that you should carry a copy and not the original. But, for this little get-together they make you bring the original.
You can find out the exact location (it might have changed) by picking up last Friday's copy of The Tico Times. Or, you can visit Mora Books in Cine Omni just off Avenida Central behind the McDonald's. If, indeed, it is still being held at La Ceveceria, then you can catch the bus directly to the event at the Alajuela bus terminal located just off the corner of the intersection of Avenida Segunda and Paseo Colon.
On 4 July 2001, I left my place with just enough money to get there and back, with a little more in case we stopped off for a couple of beers in Santa Ana or Escazu afterwards – about ¢3000.
Here's how it all went down. I started drinking promptly at 8am. After I got good and drunk, I ate about 10 hotdogs and played grab-ass with the BUD girls (who were all dressed in bathing suits). Then I remember leaving and almost getting into a fight with some Argentineans – how they got in is a good question.
I got on the bus and ran into a guy that I knew from Manuel Antonio, Kenneth G. Ungermann. He had a cooler full of Pilsen, so we drank that on the ride back into town. Somehow, we ended up in The Colonial Casino playing craps – I hadn't brought enough money to even consider getting into a game, not even playing in colones, so I'm not sure how this happened.
About 9:30pm, I looked up and I was in The Tropical Casino at the craps table with a fat American guy wearing glasses, and I had a whole tray of five dollar chips. No Ungermann. No passport. Only a couple of hundred greenbacks. The end.
I just thought that I would let all of you American travelers know that there is free beer just over the horizon. Get to it.
Questions?
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