MUNGO EATS Latin America

We decided to take a horseback trip to one of the small towns in the area.  We were ready to roll from the tour office at 9 this am.  There were 10 tourists going on the ride, 4 McLeans, a family of 4 from the Netherlands and a young couple from Paris.  Amazingly, everyone could communicate in English.  “No waivers to sign here folks, no sir, if you would all kindly hop into the  bed of this pickup truck, we will transport you to the horses.”  This is a favorite way to transport people in Mexico, pile as many as you can into the back of the pickup and because so many people like to stand as they are being transported, most of the pickups are fitted with a type of pipe cage in the box.  If you are really luxurious, they have metal seats for you to sit on inside the metal cage.  Sean and Sara were excited to be able to ride in this manner.  When asked at the end of the trail ride, what his favorite part was, Sean did not hesitate to answer, “Riding in the back of the truck!” 

The ride out to the horses was not very long, about 10 minutes.  Once we got out there, the leaders tried to pair each person up with a like minded horse.

They did pretty well, with the exception of Sara.  Her horse was fine, but her stirrups were too long and could not be adjusted shorter, so poor Sara either had to endure a sore butt when we trotted or chafe her legs on the saddle as she tried to stand above the stirrups. 

Our Parisian friends had never been on the back of a horse, but they were assured that the horses were very calm and slow.  They were fairly slow until the wrangler whacked them on the butt with a stick, then they all broke into a trot.

This is the back of my horse’s head.  He reminded me a lot of my old hound Arlo.  He was a skinny little thing, with the saddest looking tail you ever saw.  He had very narrow shoulders, stumbled a lot and none of the other horses seemed to particularly like him.     Here are my two guys and their mounts.

Kevin is the fellow in the hat.  The wrangler had his eye on this hat and if not for the fact that it was a bit too big, I think Kevin would have lost it to him.    The ride was not too bad, half along a road, half in the trees.  We did have a little incident with the Parisian fellow.  His horse had the bad habit of trying to eat while on the ride, and the Parisian, not knowing anything let the horse graze.  The wrangler told him a few times, in Spanish not to let the horse do this, but I honestly don’t think the fellow even heard.  At one point the horse was grazing and accidentally walked under a road sign.  Although the Parisian tried to limbo under the sign, he was unfortunately unseated from the horse.  He was wearing a pair of white linen pants (which I thought was a strange choice for a trail ride in the first place), but he didn’t even dirty his pants in the fall.  Ah, the  French, they have such class!

The ride took about 5 hours all together, although we were not on the horses the whole time.  We stopped at a town to look around.  Actually, I say that a bit tongue in cheek, because there were so many people trying to sell us bracelets or belts that we hardly LOOKED anywhere.   Evidently people come to look at the church because that is where the greatest concentration of peddlers was.  I know they need money, but it got a bit ridiculous really.  First they would try to sell us bracelets, we would say no thanks.  Then would ask us if we could just give them the bananas and grapes that we bought, we would say no, then could we just give them some money, NO.  I’m pretty sure at one point a lady asked to have my watch…uh, NO! 

We hope to leave this town tomorrow, although we are unsure where we will go from here.  I think there are some nice lakes we want to visit and then off to Guatemala.  Guatemala will be a new experience altogether as we have been utterly unsuccessful as finding anything even vaguely like a campsite on the internet.  I am a little stressed about this.  I guess there is nothing we can do but wait and see.  I feel my stomach starting to knot as I write this, but it is time to move on, despite our apprehension.