Puerto Escondido (day 6)

Mary’s sister in law is from a small village about a half an hour north of here. We were told that they were holding a rodeo there today, so even though we thought it was a little odd to do something like that during the day on a Wednesday, we thought okay, let’s go.

A friend drove us there in his pickup truck. We took the short cut…once we got into the hills, we had to cross the river. There’s no bridge here…you just drive across the river. At one point, I’m sure the water was two feet deep, and was lapping at the bottom of the door. The path on the other side had only been used by cows for quite some time. Too funny. Anyhow, we made it there.

We’ve learned before that we’re never sure what we’re getting ourselves into with some of these local events, so we weren’t surprised when we got there around 11:30am and found a church ceremony just beginning. There were quite a few people, we’re guessing around 400. They had chairs set up outside the small church and they were pretty much full. So we took our seats along with everyone else. I’m not a church going kinda guy, and of course it was all in Spanish. And it went on for an hour. I thought we were going to a rodeo!

After the church thing, they had a small band that played while they set up tables in the square outside the church. Apparently it was time for everybody to eat. This doesn’t cost anything, and everybody there gets fed. Everybody in the village donates to the cause, because it was explained to us later that this was the village fiesta that happens once a year to celebrate the local patron saint. We guess that nobody works that day, and the school must be closed as well. We asked about the rodeo, and were told this would happen after the meal. We did see them bringing some big bulls in on the back of pickup trucks.

First, we had a cup of soup. Not sure what parts of the cow were in the soup! But the meat we had in the next course was really good and tender and it was a good lunch. Everybody was served at the table. It was quite an assembly line they had going on.

After lunch, they cleaned everything up, and we sat…waiting. And waiting. The band played the odd tune. And we waited.

I was being really patient waiting for this rodeo thing to happen, but after more than two hours of sitting waiting, I had had enough. We asked again about the rodeo, and were told it was too hot and they would start later. Meanwhile, half the people had left, but others were just sitting around. In fact most people looked pretty bored. We waited some more. Then we asked how long it might be before they started, but I wasn’t confident that the answer would hold any accuracy. They said maybe a half an hour.

By 5:00pm, I had enough and we managed to get a taxi back to Sherman. The taxi obviously couldn’t take the short cut through the river and it took 45 minutes on a very poor dirt road. At one point, we came up to a grader trying to make the road better. The grader had only one front wheel! Too funny, only in Mexico! This guy was actually trying to grade the road with only one front wheel. I think he was actually making it worse in spots, and we saw that after we managed to pass him.

Finally made it back to Sherman. A little disappointed that we didn’t get to see the rodeo, and we probably left as it was about to start. But had we stayed, we would have ended up trying to come back in the dark, so better that we left when we did.