My first rodeo

When I received my site assiginment, someone said the coast was kind of like the wild west.

I didn’t really understand why.

Last week, the next town over was celebrating its annual fiestas, and part of the order of events included a rodeo.

I had never been to a rodeo before, so I really didn’t need any further motivation to get me out there.

Well, the rodeo ring was dug into a valley with rows for seats carved into the hillside in the middle of the country. There was no electricity into this site. They spent forty minutes trying to start a generator to power the one-speaker sound system.




There were plenty of horses (I never realized how many horses are involved in rodeos), a few bulls, a few cowboys, a beer tent, and some vendors.

Let’s focus on the vendors.

The first guy who came past was selling bags of raisins. Ten cents a bag. Three for twenty-five cents.

This was the first time that I have ever seen a raisin vendor at any event. I did see him make one sale, so he obviously knows what the people want (or at least one person).

There was also the bread salesman, scaling mountains to sell his variety of salty and sweet breads.



You also have Bonice guy. Bonice is a popular popsicle brand in Ecuador that sells for ten cents a piece. There are kind of like freeze pops. The Bonice vendors are everywhere in Ecuador, easily recognized by the hilarious carton polar bear on their pants, along with their matching polar bear fanny pack and shirt. Obviously, Bonice guy was at the rodeo, too.




When the stadium is in the wilderness, carved into the hill, it is easy to take picture that make it look like the person is really in the middle of nowhere.

And, like any Ecuadorian event, you have the beer tent.

Now, the question is, after consuming all of those raisins, loafs of bread, freeze pops, and bottles of beer, where does one go to relieve themselves?

Up the hill of course. What is this gravity you speak of?



The action in the ring was fun. They never did a full-fledged bull-riding thing. I guess they weren’t equipped. So they did a half-fledged bucking-bronco thing, which was very fun.

They also had the rodeo clowns, whose pants kept falling down. The fans thought that was the funniest thing ever.

It was a lot of fun.

Seeing as cowboys and rodeos aren’t typical of the Ecuadorian coast, I still don’t understand why someone would describe this region as the Old West.