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November 30, 2004

Jungle Horsies

Lets start off with a little explanatory background:

When I first met Laura during our boat tour of the Galapagos, she mentioned that she is an avid horse rider and that her plans in South America include going on an extensive 11-day riding journey from Argentina, over the mountains and through the lake region, into Chile. As we made plans to head south to Lima together, she suggested stopping to ride in several places, including the town of Baņos and the Vilcabamba valley in the south of Ecuador. Having pushed back our flights out of the Galapagos repeatedly to do more scuba diving, I figured that this seemed a fair compromise, at least for a couple of days.

"Iīm up for trying it," I said. "Why not?" I even managed to muster up some degree of enthusiasm, though horse riding is not something I ever particularly wanted to try.

"Its potentially a rather dangerous activity," Laura said, "especially for something with such a girly reputation."

Say what? No sooner had my enthusiasm been mustered (not an easy feat, this mustering) than did this nasty "girly reputation" business put a serious damper on it. The show-off in me quickly realized that in exchange for putting myself at risk of serious injuries, I would get few bragging privileges out of the deal. And probably not much sympathy either. I could picture it all in my mind, a troublesome vision: Multiple fractures to both arms and legs, lying in traction in the hospital (or what passed for traction in whatever excuse for a hospital I was in), while people back in New York reflected on the news.

"Hey! Hear what happened to the self-styled International Man of Sport and Leisure?"

"No! What? Is he OK? I was hoping to marry that rascally devil shortly after fufilling my duties as Ms. Universe."

"Hospitalized. Its bad: Fractions. Contusions. Protrusions. A profusion of contuberant contusional protusional fusional tusions. Or something. How the hell do I know? Iīm just a miserable corporate lawyer."

"My God! No! What was it? Sky-diving? Bungy-jumping? Alligator-wrestling? Wait! Was it the high speed mountain bike racing? Or white water rafting? Did he capsize violently while kayaking in high seas? Suffer a severe mountain climbing fall? Or was he mauled while diving by a school of hammerhead sharks who took one look at him and thought `Delicious... absolutely delicious...ī and rightfully so?"

"Nope."

"Then what?"

"Fell off a horsie."

"A horsie?!" [Disgusted look]

"Or was it a pony? Maybe it was a pony. A cute little pink baby pony. You know, like those My Little Pony dolls?"

"Oh." [Rolls eyes, shrugs] "Oh! Hey! See that dirty, smelly looking hippie over there in the Che Guevarra T-shirt?"

"The one whoīs trying to pick his nose with the ends of his dreadlocks? Or the other one?"

"No, no, that one. Isnīt he dreamy? I think Iīm in love with him."

"Yeah, well, whatever. This is all just an imagined hypothetical scenario anyway. Youīre Ms. Universe and Iīm a corporate lawyer. Unless youīre spitting in my face as we pass on the street, thereīs no way we would be interacting together in the slightest."

"Too true." [Hocks loogy in lawyerīs eye]

A vision, yes, but it all seemed so real, so very possible (especially the part about the dirty, smelly hippie picking his nose with dreadlocks). I remained true to my word and committed myself to try to ride a horse nevertheless. But I had doubts now, real doubts. How would I fare? What [dramatic pause] would become of me?

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Teņa, Ecuador

Tuesday, November 30, 2004:

It was raining when we arrived at the bridge across the river.

"If the rain keeps up," said our guide (in Spanish) "we wonīt be able to ride today. Too dangerous in the mud."

Stephanie, Laura and I sat with the guide on a bench under a small wooden pavilion erected on the side of the dirt road that led to the foot bridge. The owner of Limon Cocha was there as well, waiting to see if he would need to take us all back again. Finally, there were two German men in their mid-30s waiting with us, but they sullenly declined several attempts to start up a conversation. They were there for a walking tour rather than a riding tour, which we quickly agreed was a lucky break for the three of us.

The rain picked up. The sky was gray, the river a murky, churning brown. The bridge swayed back and forth, slowly and gradually. It wasnīt a sharp movement, but it was noticeable. We would cross this bridge, over one hundred feet above the river, to get to the stables in the rainforest where the horses were kept.

I examined myself: Jeans, t-shirt and enormous black rubber riding boots that came up to my knees. The legs of my jeans were tucked into them. I felt ridiculous. I felt... gay (not that there`s anything wrong with it). So far as I was concerned, I was a cowboy hat away from joining The Village People. Stephanie and Laura looked on as I practiced my YMCA dance moves in my seat. Which I stopped doing abruptly, each time the guide or the Germans looked my way. I was afraid that the Germans might join me.

After 15 minutes, the rain let up. The ground was soft and muddy, but was not bad enough to preclude riding. We slowly shuffled across the rickety bridge to a series of dirt trails on the other end. I was expecting to see a complex with the stables there, or within the distance of a 3-minute walk, but we actually walked for 20 or 30 minutes through different forest trails, passing the occassional small hut as we went. The area was inhabited by small groups of the same Quechua-speaking natives we had encountered while rafting on the previous day. Whenever we saw children, they stared at us. Sometimes a group of 5, 10 or more little tykes would follow us for long stretches, just to get a closer look at us, particularly tall Stephanie and blonde Laura.

Finally, a path led us to a series of wooden buildings set atop a hill. They formed part of a travelersī lodge (you could arrange week-long tours based out of it, if you so desired) that could be reached by climbing a series of stairs carved into the dirt and rock. We stopped at the base of the hill, however, where several horses were waiting for us, each one tethered to a separate tree. Our guide went about placing the saddles on them and taking care of all of the other horsie gear I could not name if my life depended on it.

While we waited, I practiced my horse riding technique. How do I have a horse riding technique, you might ask, since I have never been horse riding? Why, from watching Monty Python, of course. I galloped around for a bit until the guide turned my way. I think Laura was deeply regretting what she had gotten herself into by this point.

I didnīt catch the Quechua name of the horse the guide gave me. He was a stallion, reddish-brown, with a left ear that looked like it had been half chewed off by another horse. He wasnīt terribly large and he was somewhat on the thin side, but when I climbed up on his back there werenīt any sharp snapping noises and so, it seemed, he was sturdy enough to support me. Stephanie, also riding for the first time, got on her horse, a larger, pale white one. Laura had been on her horse for some time already. She had her own riding gear with her, for crying out loud.

The guide gave us some simple instructions on how to get the horse to go foward, turn and stop. We headed away from the lodge and out onto a path that ran parallel to the river but some hundred or more feet above it. The path was narrow and ran just along the ledge that fell down to the river. Laura rode first, the guide second, Stephanie third. I was last in the line.

We had to keep a distance of at least 3 meters between horses at all times because the horses were all stallions and might kick at one another if they felt their space was being too closely invaded. I didnīt find this a problem at first. I noticed two characteristics about my horse within the first five minutes of riding him. First, he didnīt want to move very quicky and sometimes he didnīt want to move at all. He would stop every so often as Stephanieīs horse trotted away in the distance. I would have to try to persuade him back into motion with a pat on the head, a kick in the side or a "Yah! Yah! Yah!" in his ears. The first of these techniques did nothing. The third made me feel ridiculous and probably annoyed the horse. The kicks in the side seemed to work, however.

My second observation was a little more disturbing to me. Given the choice of walking anywhere on the path he wanted, my horse veered sharply to the left side, directly along the ledge. I would steer him back to the middle or the right but, if left to his own devices, he would head back to the left again. Although I had been told repeatedly by Laura and the guide that a horse will look out for its own safety and keep itself out of harmīs way, I was starting to have my doubts. He did look a little on the depressed side, in fact. Was he bored with life, sick of it all, and looking finally to end it? Did he want to rack up a body count in the process? I decided that this just had to be the case. And so it was that within the first several minutes of the ride, on the basis of these two brilliantly observed personality traits, I came to formulate my own name for my stallion: His name was Pokey, the Suicide Horse.

It may seem like I am short-changing you here, but there isnīt much more to tell, really, unless you want vivid descriptions of each tree we passed and each muddy trail we plodded along. We spent three hours riding through different paths in the forest, passing by huts and cows and indigenos at work. The guide pointed out flowers here and there and at one point showed us a large rock with inscriptions dating back to Inca times. Mostly, we just rode. When we came to a field or a level stretch of unobstructed trail, we would let the horses trot or canter. This took some getting used to, of course. The trots jarred me uncomfortably up and down in the saddle until I started to adjust my stance to anticipate the horseīs motion. Though faster, the canters were more comfortable as they did not involve the same severity of bouncing. They did make me nervous, however, until I learned how to get my horse to slow down.
Speaking of which, Pokey, the Suicide Horse turned out to prove my initial impressions about him wrong. He was more along the lines of Speedy, the Homicide Horse, seeing as how he would bolt full-speed ahead as soon as he was given the opportunity. He didnīt want to die after all, though he didnīt seem to mind bumping me off along the way. He constantly tried to overtake Stephanieīs horse on the narrow paths and I had to work hard to slow him down before a close encounter could take place.

At the end of the ride, we ate lunch in one of the lodge buildings. I was expecting a spartan and bland indigenous meal but we were instead treated to a generous assortment of foods including a yucca soup (delicious, surprisingly), bread, ham, cheese, eggs, french fried yucca (also delicious, like bigger, meatier potato fries) and spaghetti in tomato-sauce. Dessert consisted of extremely fresh and sweet pineapple. Content and tired, we napped in hammocks for half an hour after the meal before trekking back toward the other side of the foot bridge.

We made one stop on the way back, in a small house that belonged to one of the indigenos. Our guide explained the way leaves and mud were used to create the roof. He then passed us a bowl of milky white yucca beer for us to sip. We passed it around. We tried not to make faces. It was disgusting, absolutely disgusting. Like sour, chunky milk with malt liquor mixed into it.

Back in Teņa, we had dinner at a restaurant looking out on the river. Then, Laura and I saw Stephanie off at the bus station on her way to Riobamba. At 4 AM we would come back to catch our own 4-hour bus to Baņos.

A final note: I didnīt injure myself in the slightest while riding. I was fine. I even eventually managed to get Pokey to follow my instructions to a large degree. What I will say for the experience is this: I was SORE for the next few days after the ride, exactly as though I had gone through a full-body work-out with weights at the gym. In particular, the insides of my thighs felt like they had been pummeled with a mallet. Like tenderized meat (Mmmm!). I say all of this for the record, but I am not trying to brag. And, of course, I expect no sympathy.


Posted by Joshua on November 30, 2004 11:04 PM
Category: Ecuador
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