Cowboys and more, Canadian style

We could not have timed it any better even if we wanted. Our first day in Calgary just happened to be the last day of the biggest yearly festival in town: the Stampede. Intrigued by this living tradition since 1912, we decided to go and check it out.

The cowboys are in town

As we entered the Stampede area, it hit us pretty quickly: how come we forgot our cowboy hats and boots at home? We were just surrounded by them and felt a little out of place with our travel attire. After checking out the agriculture dome and the Indian village, we went to get tickets for the main daily event: the rodeo. We had a blast at the show and took lessons from real men as they rode wild horses or bulls bareback, tackled or lassoed and tied calves. Even women are tough here: they ride horses around barrels as fast as the wind! The competition show was excellent and luckily, there were no casualties. The winner of each category got a $100,000 prize. Not bad...we could make a living of that!


After the show, our stomach growling we tried the fair healthy food: foot long corn dogs, fresh mini donuts and the local poutine (fries with gravy and cheese). The more fried the better and we went to the Nashville North stage afterwards to listen to some good old country music and dance the calories away.

We finished the day with two really entertaining shows: huge Belgian and Percheron horses pulling as much weight as they can. The record was set to 13,100 pounds (about 6 tons) pulled by two horses that make humans look like midgets. And finally, before leaving, we were able to view a Break Dancing show with audience participation that made us laugh to tears.

The amazing Canadian hospitality

Our Stampede experience (it is even a verb here, we later learned that we went stampeding that day) gave us a first taste at how nice Canadians are. As we prepared to buy tickets for the event, a lady came to us asking if we already had tickets. As we told her we didn't, she gave us a free ticket that she no longer needed. Later that day, as we attended the country music concert, another guy came to Chad and asked him if we were drinking. He replied that we were not at the moment so the guy gave him two free alcohol drink tickets. I guess we were going to drink after all:) Not sure if we look tremendously in need or just look like the nicest people that deserve things but we got pretty lucky that day.

But our best experience of the Canadian hospitality was our stay with Mario. He hosted us for three nights in Calgary, being the nicest and most resourceful host we had. He drove us around in town for things we needed, fixed us daily breakfast and even let us use his garage to do our motorcycle tune ups. We were able to change our sparplugs, change oil and radiator fluid in the comfort of his garage. This is the living proof that indeed, Canadians are really nice people!