After a wonderfully relaxing night at the Hacienda Abraspungo, we set off for an outdoor excursion. We’d spent a lot of yesterday travelling and everyone wanted to get outdoors and do something active. What we didn’t know was that we’d be riding horses up in the mountains.
We were told that we’d be visiting an old hacienda that was being used as a ranch with horseback riding trails for visitors. I’ve been horseback riding before so I expected it would be something similar. You arrive at the stable, get on a horse, and then run around the fields for awhile and maybe follow some paths through a forest.
This was a little more exotic.
The ranch was maybe 45 minutes from our location in Riobamba. While I don’t remember our exact route, that 45 minutes was spent not driving on a highway, but winding up and around narrow dirt roads with hairpin corners and switchbacks, constantly going higher and higher into the mountains. At times the roads seemed barely maintained and washed out, and sometimes you wondered if we were even supposed to be driving where we were.
As we continued, sometimes the brush would clear and we could peer out the window to see over the edge down into the valley below. This confirmed how high up we were—much higher than I thought. I’d never considered riding horses up at this elevation.
Eventually, we drove around a corner, the road levelled off and we arrived at a small villa with horses out front. The main building resembled an 18th century villa that hadn’t been maintained since… the 18th century.
The stablehands came out to meet us and size us up so we’d have an appropriate horse. (Big people, big horses. Small people, small horses.) My equestrian knowledge is limited to recognizing that my horse was one of the grey ones.
We started off in a small valley. It was hard to perceive how high we actually were (10,800 ft at the villa) because we were surrounded by trees. The ride started by following a dirt road for about half a mile which let everyone get used to their horses. (And for the horses to get used to their riders!)
As we continued, the path became less of a road and more of a rough trail in the landscape. Things became more jagged, rocky and uneven. When I rode before, it was always on a more or less level landscape. We were starting to climb up and down and—for someone who doesn’t ride horses regularly—it was a little nerve-wracking.
Combined with the rocks, we encountered and crossed small streams, long valleys, steep hills and every other sort of terrain. We rode for maybe an hour before arriving in a very large meadow and open field of grass for as far as we could see, bounded by the hillside.
We were surrounded by lush green vegetation, grass, fields, trees, and bushes up in the Andes mountains, now at 12,200 ft elevation. Then the weird realization hits you. We’re riding horses on a mountain range.
There was literally nobody else that we could see or hear other than our group for miles. It felt completely surreal.
We spent some time in the valley just resting and enjoying the landscape. It was a very quiet time and I suspect many in the group were taking the time to reflect on this amazing experience.
If I was going to complain about one downside of this entire experience, it’s that it’s really hard to get in-focus composed photos while riding on the back of a horse! (Go figure, right?) I didn’t want to risk shooting with my dSLR so every photo here was taken with my Canon G15 PowershotCanon G15 Powershot (which was tiny and portable, and I wasn’t too worried about it in case it didn’t survive the trail ride).
Many people used their cellphone cameras. I was too worried about dropping it somewhere and having a horse step on it. I wouldn't trust myself with holding a cellphone while trying to ride a horse. At least the camera had a strap.
The number of blurry and “subject out-of-frame” shots I have is really, really high from this excursion. It didn’t help that the day was overcast which meant I couldn’t have as fast a shutter speed as I wanted. I should have worried less about depth of field and more about shutter speed (and blur). Lessons learned for next time!
Or, I'll have to get one of those fancy gimbal stabilizer unitsgimbal stabilizer units that I see people with. If there's any place it might be useful, it's on the back of a horse!
I haven’t won the lottery yet, but I can only imagine that winning it leads to experiences like this. A few of us in the group were talking about how this felt like we were living in a TV commercial showing the grandiose leisure activities you’ll enjoy when you win the lottery. It didn’t seem like it could get much better than this.