La Fiesta de los Vaqueros

Tucson doesn’t have Easter holidays like the rest of the western world it splits it in half so that the populace can celebrate Rodeo. This year was the 83rd Annual Rodeo, highlighted by the Tucson Rodeo Parade on Thursday, Feb. 21. We had been to the rodeo in the past, full of wild stallion riding, bull riding and children riding sheep; but this was the first rodeo parade for us. And it doesn’t get any bigger than this, the longest non-motorised parade in the world with 200 floats and 200,000 spectators. See if you can spot Sadie in the movie below!

We travelled the 15 miles to the rodeo ground by ‘Sun Tran’ bus, who did a special return journey from our local ‘Park Place Mall’, for $1. We were both in western costume and wearing cowboy hats borrowed from our friends Jeff and Sally respectively. Interestingly though, there are probably more cowboys on New Years Eve in Bideford. This year the parade was quite an ‘organised’ event with strict marshalling to prevent the public from crossing the road as a young girl had been killed last year when a the horse she was riding bolted. The wide roads that the parade took were lined with big pickup trucks, nose in, on the large dirt edge or ‘sidewalk’ of the roads. The crowd was predominantly Mexican, and extended families gathered on and around the trucks, whose beds were often lined with food. For Sadie and me, people watching was more interesting than the actual parade which moved quite slowly and had many gaps between floats and posse’s of horse and riders. We spent most of our time in front of a mobile Mexican café where we ate breakfast burritos to the sound of excellent piped Mexican music; there was a real friendly party atmosphere.