The Cowboy Capital
Our Greyhound journey involves a quick stop in Dallas where we have to board a different bus, whereupon sleep hits again and when we wake up, we’re in Austin. We’ve booked a hire car and they pick us up from the Greyhound Station and take us to their office. We booked an economy vehicle, but are upgraded. Our mid-sized car is a silver Pontiac and we create hassle for them by having a debit card that is not from Texas. We end up paying cash and putting the security deposit on Alexis’ parents’ card that she has for emergencies. I had the same issue buying credit for my mobile – the phone company would not accept my non-U.S. credit card, even though that’s what I bought the sim card and original credit with. It became such an issue that I gave Carla the cash and used her card. The car hire company also doesn’t give us a map of any kind, and does not have GPS available for hire. They do, however, print out directions for and send us on our merry way.
Driving is quite easy. Most of the highways are well marked and the traffic flows smoothly. One trick I learn is that you can turn right even if there’s a red light. The main issue with directions is that signs direct you to different numbered roads, rather than towards a place. You need to know your compass directions, which I don’t. Just as well most cars have a built in compass, although I don’t notice ours until day two as it is on the edge of the rear view mirror. We navigate successfully until we get to an interchange where our directions read something like this, “Turn right onto I240 Texas 16, then a slight left onto South I35 East Texas 16 North.” Huh? We try every possible road until we get it right, confirmed by the petrol station attendant.
Texas looks a lot like you’d expect, with a few rolling hills in the background, green yet dusty and dry. It’s hot enough to fry an egg on the car bonnet. I love Bandera town on sight. It is small, with two main streets with old-style antique shops, a general store, and a few saloons. We stop at one for lunch. It’s hard to believe this is not a Wild West themed restaurant, but rather, is the real thing. Everything is made of wooden planks and there are animal skulls hanging on the walls, interspersed with neon beer advertising signs. There is no air conditioning, just fans lazily pushing the hot air around. I’m expecting to see a cowboy walk in spinning the guns from his holsters, spurs clanking, and order a beer. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen. I have a Quesadilla for lunch with lime dressing.
We wander the few shops in town, sweating. It’s Dubai temperatures, just not quite as humid. I find the perfect t-shirt, but in the wrong colours. It reads “Life’s too short to dance with ugly cowboys.”
Our next stop is Twin Elms ranch, our accommodation for the night. It’s definitely a step up from a hostel. The rooms are rustic-looking with wood paneling, saddles and the like, with huge comfy beds. The ranch sits on something like 250 acres of land, but it is a guest ranch, so they don’t keep livestock apart from horses. The staff are incredibly friendly and have been really helpful in making an exception to their two-night minimum stay. I walk around the ranch grounds, then head to the pool to cool off.
Much refreshed, the cowbells clank and clatter at 5.30pm to summon everyone to dinner. There are seven or eight people staying, plus us. All food is included in the package and dinner is breaded pork chops with sweet carrots (cooked in honey and sugar), peppered potatoes and salad. We also have apple and cherry pie for dessert. We have a choice of iced sweet tea (it’s a southern thing again) or lemonade – as in made-of-fresh-lemons. I get through three big glasses of lemonade.
After dinner and chat, Alexis and I wander down the hill to the rodeo ground. There is a rodeo here every Tuesday and Friday. The latter are the big ones, as Tuesday nights have only just started, but they still have enough competitors and audience members to make it work. We cheer on the cowboys as they compete in steer roping. Shoot-dogging (or something like that – it’s where they grab a steer, drag it about 10 metres, then wrestle it to the ground), and the grand finale, riding the bucking broncos. They also have mutton running, where the kids are put on the back of a sheep and have to hang on for as long as possible as the sheep takes off down the field, and another thing where they send two steers out with ribbons on them and the participants have to chase them to grab the ribbons. Alexis joined in on that one. I decided flip flops and my lack of sprinting ability were not going to get me far.
We were told by the ranch staff that no visit to Bandera is complete without a drink at Longhorns, the local bar owned by famous country music singer Clint Black’s slightly less famous singing brother, so we headed to the bar for an extremely entertaining evening. The bar is set up like a barn, with a stage, a concrete floor (should have been sawdust) and benches. I almost expected the music to stop when we walked in, but the locals contented themselves with just checking us out. My wierdo magnet must have been in overdrive, as by the time I reached the bar, the extremely drunk rancher at the end of the bar had decided I was the one. We bought a drink and sat down and were joined by Greg/Craig (the accent with the alcohol confused me) who spent most of the evening staring at me and occasionally reaching out to stroke my hand. This was a tad unnerving, as was the sight of him tucking chewing tobacco under his tongue, but was modified by the fact that he could dance, so every third song we would get up and do the Texas Two-Step (For the men, one step on the right foot, two on the left, mostly closed neck height hold, open hold also possible, as are turns and returns.) Oh, I forgot to mention it was karaoke night. Oh yes, country and western karaoke. It just doesn’t get any better.
I was convinced to sing by the bar manager, but agreed only if his brother, a tall ageing cowboy, would join me. It took a while to find a song we both knew – they don’t even know Bryan Adams Summer of 69 round these parts – so Elvis it was. Must have been impressive, as it scored me a proposal from my new friend, who thought perhaps I could marry him and stay in Bandera. I settled for a bit more two-stepping instead. A much better idea. I think we met all the locals that night, being the new girls in town - the cowboys, faded country stars, young truck-driving lads and the one armed horse trainer. The best compliment was getting up to dance with yet another guy and having him not believe that I’d only learnt the two-step that night. We lasted till 1am then decided it was time to hit the hay. (Like that country metaphor?)
Trail Rides and Tubing
A breakfast of scrambled eggs with tortillas and potatoes energised us for our morning trail ride. There were four of us that headed out with our cowboy guide, Justin, to see more of the ranch. The horses were beautifully well-behaved and it was a lovely ride in and out of the trees and through the river. In fact, it was so nice we decided to go on the second one as well. This one was even better as it was only Justin, Alexis and I, so we got to do a little bit of cantering when we got to the open field, and we went on different trails, but with the same horses. After two hours on the horse, my behind became one with the saddle and I’m still feeling it two days later.
We were supposed to leave at midday, but were invited to join in on tacos for lunch. Yay for free delicious food. Justin then recommended that we tube down the Medina River that runs behind the rodeo ground before we departed, so we dropped the car at the end point and he took us to the start point with two huge inner tubes. The river was far from being fast flowing, so it involved a lot of paddling and occasionally, standing up and walking past the extra shallow bits, but it was very pleasant in the shade of the trees and we met up with Justin leading another trail ride further downstream.
We left the tubes under a tree for Justin to collect and drove back towards Austin to stop in at Gruene (pronounced green). This is another small historic town that used to be a cotton milling area, but after one bad harvest the mill closed down. It’s also good for tubing down the Guadalupe River and that one looked like it actually had a current, but hey, our tubing was free. The biggest landmark in Gruene is the Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas. Inside it is basically a bar, but with a small wooden stage and floorboards that must have seen much two-stepping action.
Next stop was Austin and after a few wrong turns, we made our way to the hostel. It’s a little way out of town, but right on the banks of Town Lake, the massive river-like lake that sits in the centre of Austin. It was beautiful watching the sun sink over the river. We drove back into town for dinner, but the restaurant we’d chosen looked a little too up market for our shorts and t-shirts, so we moved on to Sixth Street, known for the live music scene. We decided on a place called Hut’s, another diner-style place. I had a fantastic salad that was so big I couldn’t finish it.
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