The Ride of a Lifetime

Saturday brought one of the most interesting and authentic adventures yet...

One of my students invited me and Emily to his friend´s farm in the small countryside pueblo of Tisaleo, about 45 minutes away from Ambato. This past weekend was their annual festival, though we saw nothing of it except a crazy old deaf man lighting rustic (to say the least) bottle rockets in the middle of the town square at 9 a.m. Instead of watching bulls run through the plaza trying to kill drunk people, we were high up in the mountains on horseback.

We arrived to the farm around 10:30 to meet our host, Darwin, and choose our horses. They were all saddled up and ready to go, so it was just a matter of deciding who would get what horse. We discussed our experience levels and Darwin assigned us accordingly. I was pretty much the only one with ¨experience¨ (which includes 3 weeks of riding horses when I was ten and eleven years old and once again when I was probably 16). I tried my best to remember everything I learned at horse camp, but knew that I was probably in over my head. Getting on an unfamiliar horse always makes me a little bit nervous because you are never know if you´re going to get a docile and agreeable horse or completely untrained and wild beast. Unfortunately, I got the latter.

With my entire 3 weeks of childhood experience, I was the first to mount the horse. Bad idea. Mihija, as I´ll call her, just couldn´t wait to go and took off galloping. I wasn´t really that nervous because I knew the rules about how to direct a horse with the reins. I held onto the saddle with one hand and yanked the reins back hard with my other hand and said WHOA. Well, apparently this horse didn´t speak English or respond to the vigorous rein-pulling and kept sprinting, a toda vela, for about 100 yards. We finally slowed and when we did, the saddle was no longer on top of the horse, but on its side. I, with the saddle, was also hanging off the side of the horse, and then finally just fell to the ground. The other 3 watched from afar, then made their way over to ask if I was okay, then laugh at me. I was in pain but also laughing and wishing the whole thing had been caught on videotape. Lesson learned: adjust your own saddle before mounting the horse.

I had a little talk with mihijita and then got right back on to head into the hills. Darwin tied mihiita´s lead to his horse and we rode together for awhile until I got my confidence back. After about a half an hour, we broke free and mihijita turned out to be quite easy to ride. I think she was just testing me from the beginning to see if I was worthy of riding her. We walked mountain trails and got to see an amazing view of the fields and the far-off city of Ambato. As we got further away, there were no more cows and horses and crops, just pure nature. The landscape, called páramo, is completely different than anything I´ve seen. It looks a little bit like the alpine landscape of the high Rockies, but the ground is like sponge. The vegetation collects all the water when it rains, which is later extracted and utilized by the towns at lower altitude for their water supply. We had to climb some steep hills and bushwhack through a few patches of trees, but finally came upon a ridge that looked down into a beautiful, lush, green valley at the foot of Carihuairazo, which rises about 5000 meters or 16,400 feet. The whole scene was absolutely gorgeous.

We descended down the steep terrain into the valley (on horses) and this is about where the story turns slightly bad. What we had intended to be a short 2 or 3 hour trail ride to view the landscapes and breathe the fresh air soon turned into a 7-hour adventure. In Ecuador I have taught myself to expect the unexpected, but even I was unprepared for this trip. It turns out that our descent was exceedingly steep in some parts, causing us to have to dismount our horses and walk them for safety reasons. Once we got onto flat land, we got back on the horses and started to ride...until the leader sunk into about 6 feet of mud. This vegetation, called pantano, is essentially like a bog and couldn´t support the weight of the horses. We were looking for alternate routes, but it was all too soft. We finally decided that we had to go back the way we came. The route was impossibly steep to go down, and all the same, impossibly steep to walk up. The guys each took two of the horses and walked a slightly longer but a little bit flatter route, while Emily and I climbed the ridge a different way. It took an uncountable number of switchbacks and sustained rests (remember, we´re almost 3 miles up from sea level here) but we finally made it back up to the top of the ridge. As we were waiting for the guys and horses, a man on horseback came up behind me. I was definitely not expecting to see anyone, so I was a little nervous, especially considering he had a badass sword protruding out of his boot, but he turned out to be quite a nice man who was just out for a long and peaceful ride on his white horse. The man from Mocha, as he is now known, and I shared some peanuts and talked about the countryside of Ecuador until the guys came up about 45 minutes later.

All of us and all of the horses were exhausted, but we were still about 2 and a half hours away from home, so we got on the horses and decided to ride back. We could see the town of Tisaleo way in the distance, but getting there was going to be a challenge because there were patches of dense forest, uncrossable ridges, rivers, and barbed wire fences. We did our best and finally came across and indigenous man working in his field who helped us find our way back. The way back was not without incident, either, as one horse was very tempermental and refused to walk, JC flipped over the horse when trying to mount it, and Darwin´s horse almost bucked him off when something was wrong with its bit. It was cold and we were tired, but as we always do, we just laughed it all off and prayed that we made it home before dark. We rolled in at about 6 (it gets dark at 6:15) and dismounted. All of us walked out of there like ducks, our backs, legs, knees, and feet hurting pretty bad.

We finally made our way back into the city and went for pizza at an Italian restaurant (we never ate lunch during our viaje on horseback) then to a little cozy bar for hot wine. Emily and I were filthy - mud on our pants, leaves in our hair, etc. - and smelled like horses, but luckily our friends didn´t mind. I am still sore from the whole thing, but we saw some of the most beautiful landscapes and made some new friends, so it all turned out alright. I think I´ve satisfied my desire to ride on horses for a little while, but at the same time rediscovered how much I love it. I´ll keep you updated if I decide to go on another cabalgata anytime soon.

SM