Countdown: 5

I'm leaving for Guyana August 8th.  Each weekday, I'll post some information about the country.

Lethem Rodeo 

There are cows at the Lethem Rodeo. Shocking. (source)

Every Easter, the town of Lethem, near the border of Brazil,  sheds its sleepy small town cocoon and blossoms as a resplendent rodeo town.  Or something like that.  People from all of Guyana and northern Brazil come to Lethem for the Rupununi Rodeo, the brainchild of an American expat, Ben Hart.  After working on the railroad in Guyana, Mr. Hart settled down in Lethem and began having rodeo competitions on the weekends, which evolved into the international spectacle.  The Rupununi is the savanna region in the south of Guyana, a stark contrast to the dense jungles that cover most of the northern part of the country. 

The spectacle that is the Rupununi Rodeo sounds fitting for what is effectively a frontier town:

The festivities unofficially begin on Good Friday night when there is aprty at Macedo's Texaco petrol station.  Everybody in town gathers around the gas pump to smoke cigarettes, drink Guyanese rum and Brazilan beer and eat meat on a stick.  It's a surreal scene complete with Georgetown, scantily clad Brazilian women, drunken foreign volunteers and plenty of locas.  It's a fitting start to a rodeo weekend.

Sounds like a typical Friday night at the Wal-Mart in my hometown (substitute trashy girls from the next town in place of Brazilian chicks), so I think I'll fit right in if I get to attend the rodeo.  On Saturday and Sunday the best savanna cowboys (vaqueros) strut their stuff at the rodeo grounds, competing in bull-riding, horse-riding, steer roping, wild cow milking, etc.  Most of the cowboys are barefoot Amerindians and events are open to all.

Some of the placements, which I'm still waiting on, are near Lethem, so hopefully I can make it to the rodeo.

 Quote and other info adapted/taken from Guyana, a Bradt guidebook by Kirk Smock.