Barretos

Last weekend was a great trip again! Henrique, my German friend Paula's cousin, who lives in Sao Paulo, invited me to spend some days with his familiy in the countryside town of Barretos, about 400km north of SP. Oddly, he didn't want to go himself, but I agreed and so drove there with a lift he'd organized.
His family are some kind of wealthy farmers with several cattle ranches and sugar cane plantations in several states throughout Brazil. However, at this time, they only people who stayed there were on visit: Henrique's sister Adriana with husband and baby, his brother Antenor with girlfriend and a couple of other friends, besides about 5 permanent staff.
Barretos these days is setting to the largest rodeo festival either in Brazil or in the world, according to different sources ;) There is a huge park in the city with a 30,000-seat rodeo arena. Around it, there's some kind of carnival with lots of stands and attractions, besides numerous so-called ranchos which are privately-owned restaurants only accessible to members, where people eat, drink and talk. The whole thing is only busy during the two weeks of the festival, the rest of the year it's dead.
Henrique's family is member of one rancho, so that's where we spend most of the daytime. On evenings there were the competitions in the arena with several disciplines, such as bulldog (riding on a wild bull) or one that looks like playing judo with a 350kg-calf.
Most people were dressed like cowboys with boots, hat etc. so it's probably very similar to rodeo in the U.S. The competitors, besides Brazil, came from Mexico, the U.S., Canada and Australia.
On Friday and Saturday night of the closing week, there is a famous party in Barretos called Festa do Patrao. However, it has nothing to do with the rodeo, mainly rich people from Sao Paulo coming only for the party, as it cost about $110 for two days. I got it for less and went on Saturday with some friends and it was really good. I stayed until 9 a.m. By late afternoon on Sunday, I returned to SP.

Rodeo discipline called bulldog

The Rodeo arena


"Touro Mecânico"

The park