It was towards the end of the rainy season, and my husband and I - having just returned from a five-week trip to Europe to get married - felt the need to escape (again) our work and living surroundings in Liberia (Guanacaste), and took a trip to see El Rio Celeste, in the Tenorio national park. The lodge we stayed at, nearby the park, offered simple wooden cabins, a log fire-heated outdoor jacuzzi, a freshwater river gushing through the domain and endless expanses of tropical forest punctuated by fields of grazing cattle, perfect for a spot of horseback riding.
It's one of these cattle that caught my attention, as my accompanying costa rican vaquero and I passed a hilltop and overlooked a semi-enclosed pasture.
Right in the middle of it, surrounded by happily munching cows, sat the biggest, most imposing beast of a bull I had ever seen in my life. Blown away by the size and appearance of it, I asked the vaquero what sort of a bull this was, to which he exclaimed: "Simbrah"!
No, this was not a fantasy name inspired by Disney's "Lion King", but a contraction of "Simmenthal" and "Brahma", two breeds of cow respectively from Switzerland and India. I was dumbfounded. I had just found my match. In a cow.
