The Grand International Copan Rodeo

We awoke early the next morning. We were refreshed from our drive and itching to find the rodeo grounds and see if this famed rodeo really existed. We stumbled out to the patio in front of our room and relaxed on wrought iron furniture while we were served fresh fruit, homemade bread with pineapple marmalade and fresh scrambled eggs filled with peppers, onions and tomatoes. We gorged, loving every bite.

We changed into jeans and closed toed shoes and followed Howard’s (the owner of B&B) directions to the rodeo. Copan is a very small town and tracking down the rodeo should not have been as hard as it was. Brian and I had both heard of the rodeo through numerous sources. Backpackers, guidebooks, tip sheets and locals had referenced it but no one could tell us a date. We had given a half-hearted attempt last year to track it down but were not successful and only heard about it months after the fact.

This year I had gotten a little smarter and found a 4-year-old blog that referenced it. The blog had been written in March of 2008 so I contacted Howard the last week of February and asked if he had heard anything about a rodeo in the coming month. He said no, but that he would keep his ears open and let me know. 2 weeks later, I received and email on Friday afternoon, March 9^th, that said it was happening the next day. As spontaneous as Brian and I like to fancy ourselves, I had 110 essays that needed to be graded for Monday and there was just no way we could take off that night. We were quite disappointed. We had the date, but no time. I wrote Howard a quick email thanking him and explaining we couldn’t make it. He responded that it was two weekends long, March 17^th and 18^th, too. Well, la-dee-da, we could totally do that, so we reserved a room and made plans to attend.

So there we were Saturday morning. We assumed we would get to see a rodeo that day but we have become wary of any plans in Honduras, there was just as much chance that we would see an empty lot as a rodeo, nothing is a sure bet here. We wandered down to where they had erected a tiny circular corral and a small tent. This set up was located at the end of a large dirt lot, big enough to be a fully sized arena. We asked a group of men where the rodeo was going to happen. They gestured to the corral. We smiled and laughed awkwardly. The corral was no more than 35 feet across, if that. 

Brian explained that we were here to see the rodeo; you know horses, cows and such. Where was that going to happen? Again, they gestured to the corral and the pieces of metal piled precariously with 1x4s across them, so that they resembled stands. We shook our heads in disbelief. There was no way a rodeo could happen in there, two horses couldn’t even fit in there. We sighed. Failure. We walked away and back up the hill to town. We grabbed lunch and relaxed in the sun. We weren’t going to get to see a rodeo, so we figured we mine as well relax and enjoy the day.

By five o’clock we were hungry again and so we wandered up the hill to a brewery that recently opened. The owner was a German guy with such a thick accent it took me 2 to 3 minutes every time he spoke to translate it into English I understood. Brian loved his beers, though, and he loved that Brian was a home brewer so they talked for ages and he gave us a behind the scenes tour. His house looked like a German castle built out of bright orange concrete, it even had a little turret. he explained that he had moved here to brew beer and cook German sausage (that he made himself) and he loved it and was making money hand over fist. It was all quite amusing and lead to a successful evening. To top it off, he explained that we had not misunderstood and that the rodeo would be taking place that night in the tiny little corral. So as soon as we tucked the last bit of sausage and cheese into our mouths we said goodbye and rushed back down the hill, hoping we hadn’t missed anything.

By the time we reached the “rodeo grounds” (said with air quotes high in the air) it was dark and people were everywhere. The corral was in the same place and the rest of the lot was filled with fancy, gorgeous pickups (we were later informed these trucks belonged to ‘cocaine cowboys’ – aka rich, drug-dealing men) and one or two horse trailers. This seemed like an odd number of trailers for a rodeo, but at this point the whole thing seemed silly. The stands were bursting with people in jeans and boots and western shirts and those straw cowboy hats that my dad has always mocked me for wearing, but are completely acceptable in a hot, humid country.

We paid the entry fee and climbed the stands. I asked Brian to sit on top, so we would have a good view, fully admitting that when the stands collapsed we would have the longest drop, but thinking the risk was worth it. There were no stairs and the benches were just multiple 1x4s overlapping. You had to be careful as you sat or stood because if the person on one end got up, the person on the other end could topple right off. Once seated I pretty much clung to the metal, trusting it to keep me secure.

The stands filled to bursting point and people threw back beers and mango slices with abandon. For the first hour, we watched a man ride a dancing horse in the tiny corral around and around. The horse was astonishingly good at keeping the beat as the music changed but even with his skill there is only so much of that you can watch. Soon I was distracted by people-watching. Honduran men burped and rubbed their bellies, enjoying their beers. Women wore common western attire but instead of boots they wore 5-inch stiletto heels. Children played under the bleachers shaking them and crawling on them and dodging the glass beer bottles as people dropped them from above. Groups of people gathered on tailgates on the highway 20 feet away, trying to see in without paying and other men tried climbing the back of the stands to see. It was a circus of people and Brian and I were in awe.

Suddenly, the music changed from Latin flair to Alan Jackson. It was time to begin. At some point in the day a second set of paneling had been stretched around a third of the corral and 9 bulls had been crammed between. An announcer made some jokes and tried to get people to cheer. He eventually succeeded when he yelled out that any man who didn’t cheer didn’t like women. The stands came alive then. He introduced 15 cowboys who all walked (walked, not rode) into the arena and swooped their hat for the crowd. Then he listed the sponsors and directed our attention to the make-shift chute in the corral. The music level rose and the bull burst from the chute… and meandered to other side. The cowboy kicked and flailed to no avail. The bull was having none of it. The buzzer sounded and cowboy dismounted and exited the corral to the sound of one or two claps. The next 2 bulls were similar. The gate would open, the bull would hop out and then immediately and calmly walk around the pen, as docile as pet. It was as anti-climatic as you could get.

The most exciting part was watching the chute help try to get the bulls back into the line again. They were clearly afraid of these giant animals and did not want to go near them, however the corral was so small there was nowhere else for them to be. It took almost 10 minutes between rides to get the bulls corralled and the whole time it was just a bull wandering round and men jumping on the fence whenever it looked their way. Brian observed that from his experiences with my dad, he had assumed anyone who dealt with livestock knew what they were doing, but after 20 minutes of watching grown men run away from a docile bull in a corral 30 feet wide he now knew that was far from true.

After 3 bulls had been ridden, two miniature ponies were led into the corral. The announcer then asked for little children to come up and volunteer to ride them. At first this looked to be quite boring, little kids on ponies, dull. But it turned out that the ponies were wild. As soon as they placed the first little girl on the pony’s back in took off racing through the corral throwing its hind legs in the air. People in the stands jumped up to watch, Brian and I included, and were rewarded by watching a 5-year-old get thrown over the pony’s head and into the fence. Cheers and laughter filled the air. I was in shock, but the girl was fine. She wiped off her tears and crawled out the fence and into her mother’s arms. After this little boy after little boy climbed on and were thrown this way and that. The men in the arena just laughed and laughed and put kid after kid (all boys, now) on the ponies’ backs. It was terrible and entertaining all at once. In the end, the crowd cheered for the boys we thought rode best and they received 10 dollars each. It was nuts.

Then bull riding began again. This time the bulls were a little angrier and two out of three leaped into the air and gave real rides. It was much more entertaining, I figured it must have hurt the bull’s pride to be outdone by some miniature-bucking ponies. After 3 more bulls, the dancing horse came back for another round, prancing his way around and around. Eventually the music ended and the bulls were up again, I was growing restless, bull riding has never been my favorite rodeo event, give me steer-wrestling any day, and the stands seemed to be creaking from the weight of too many people, but Brian was enthralled and wanted to see what the next break between bulls would be.

It turned out Brian was right to settle me down. The next break was the main event, for sure. A bleached-blonde Guatemalan took center stage. She wore skintight, royal blue, bell-bottom pants and a matching bra. Both pieces were covered in sequins and glitter. Her belly was perfectly toned and she had curves in all the right places. She had a long coat on and as she walked to the middle of the arena she called for a strong man to help her take it off. A cowboy entered from the side and assisted her as the audience cat-called like crazy. She shook her bottom at us and signaled for music. The cowboy went to escape but she grabbed him and made him dance with her. He was loving it, we were loving it, it was entertainment at its best. She started to sing and shake her hips in a way that would make Shakira proud. Soon she excused that cowboy and called to another audience member to join her, she had no inhibitions and it was surprisingly entertaining to watch her tease and flirt with the cowboys and the audience at the same time. Even with the performance all in Spanish, Brian and I were laughing and singing and dancing with everyone else, she was that good.

Soon after it was bull time again, then more dancing horse and then more bulls and then the end. It was nothing like a rodeo or even a bull-riding event back home. It was totally unsafe, absolutely nuts and as far as we could tell no scores were ever announced. In the end, there was a winner, and he received all the money that had been donated by the audience – it was approximately $100. I have no idea how he was declared winner and honestly, I don’t think anyone cared.

We wandered back to our room, laughing, glad we were able to attend, even if it was nothing like the Grand International Copan Rodeo we had imagined.