We arrived in Calgary at midday on Thursday (9th July). Within an a hour of arriving Grant’s uncle, Rand, whisked us away to the Calgary Stampede. It was rodeo time after all! My first rodeo. It was brilliant but man it was hot! I had not realised that the scoring for the various events is so technical. I thought the Cowboys just had to stay the horses or bulls for the longest. Little did I know!

Rodeo is big business. Each event is scored by the performance of the cowboy and the ‘stock’ i.e. the horse or bull. The stock is bred and then effectively hired to the cowboys for a share of their winnings. Money is won on each heat and the ultimate prize money is £100,000 for each event.

The cowboys and cowgirls come from all over Canada and the U.S. to compete for the titles and the prize money. It’s pretty cool but you couldn’t pay me enough money to battle with any of that stock. They would break me in half.

Below is a bit of action from the Stampede. Sadly I missed the Chuck Wagon Racing but think a two man (or woman) wagons being pulled by four horses around a racetrack, competing against three other wagons, and you’ll get the idea.

Outside of the daytime events there is also the carnival; the halls of displays varying from livestock to artwork to hot tubs to camper vans (basically driving houses by London standards); music concerts; and of course the party tents. The one we ended up in last night is called Nashville North. I’m not sure what this name has to do with Canada but nobody seemed to know or care.

I manage to grab a few cowboys, Rand being one of them, for a dance which was grey fun. For the South Africans out there, it’s similar to sokkie.

And then of course each night around 11pm there is a fireworks display which lasts about 5 minutes. What a great way to end the night (for me anyway as the Stampede closes in the early hours of the morning).

At this point I should probably mention some other misconceptions I had about Canada. Firstly, I thought it was either cold or really cold. Well, given that we barely ever went under 30 degrees Celsius (excluding when we were at the glaciers), I was horribly mistaken. Canada gets really hot during summer. This may also explain why everyone is ridiculously brown. I kept thinking I was at the coast!

The above, and the fact that the men are generally pretty beefy, made me feel like I was in South Africa. Well, excluding the part about the fact that you can leave all your stuff unlocked on your bike and come back to find it actually still there. Amazing!

My other misconception was that Calgary was a ‘one horse town’. Turns out its the 4th largest city in Canada, so not at all what I was expecting. The photo below taken from Prince’s Island Park will give you an idea of what I mean.

With my time in Canada drawing to a close very quickly I would like say thank you to everyone who went out of their way to make my visit an unforgettable one. You will be in my heart and thoughts always.