Horseback to Destination Toad

The activity we had planned for Super Bowl Sunday, the day after my wife's birthday, was a two fold adventure to an organic coffee plantation and then on to a remote jungle hot spring. When we learned that the plantation wasn't going to be open for show, because the ladies that run it don't work on Sunday, we decided to move those activities to Monday, and do Monday's slightly more leisurely activity on Sunday.

That also made the chances of catching my Giants in the Big Game better, since that leisurely activity was the horseback ride.

The horseback ride through the ruins that we'd originally wanted to do might have been possible fifty years ago, or if you could afford to change the rules, so we instead did that tour on foot, vowing to ride some horses at some point.

We arranged our trip and were joined by another couple, a pair of Canucks, fresh from Ottawa. What is it with us and people from Ottawa? The four of us followed our guide and his son down the street to a field where the caballos were.

The Canadian gentleman's name was Dan (easy for me to remember), and he was bigger than I was. I mention this because when they brought four of the sorriest, broken down looking old mares over in our direction I nodded a little to myself. That white one is Dan's, since it was marginally bigger than the dark, really old looking one. That honey would be sporting me.

Corrie assured me that they weren't ponies, that they were a breed of horse that is somewhat smaller, but not to fret. They're tough and can carry plenty of weight.

Okay.

The first horse I ever remember riding was at Yellowstone (pretty sure) when I was 11. It's name was Satan. I always thought that was pretty cool when I was a kid, and frankly still do. A few years later the second horse I (ever) rode was named Doobie. I remember thinking at the time that these were the two coolest names any kid could get for random horses they assign to him. I took them as good omens, but our journeys were always slow walking in lines to specific vistas and preordained historical conversation pieces.

My horse this day was named Chica Loca, while Corrie had probably the youngest mare; she went by the name Princessa.

The guide and his son, the caballero and caballero-in-training, walked behind us the entire way, making kissing noises, noises that in turn made the horses walk.

This was one of the few times I felt like an asshole tourist--being paraded through Copan's steep cobblestone streets on a horse that slid most of the way down to the bottom. (Another time would be wearing my trekking backpack in Guatemala City trying to make out the number of quetzales I was being charged for street food...way obviously out of place.)

Apparently, Chica Loca was the matriarch, or alpha bitch, or whatever that position is, since she absolutely wouldn't let any of the other horses get in front of her. She'd snap and bite at them; she veer them off the (eventually) dirt path and into bushes; when ever the clip-clopping of a near trotting horse would sound from behind us, she'd take off, lest anyone'd get close.

This was particularly vexing for Dan's white horse, with whom Chica Loca battled most of the trip. That white horse would give up and then go on to bully the other two mares. Or so I heard, since I only saw open dirt road.

The destination of the trip was a tiny village that overlooked some beautiful landscape above Copan and had foot access to the mysterious and ancient sapos, or "toads".

These are some of the oldest sculptures by people who lived in these mountains, carved by the precursors to the Maya.

We didn't end up buying any fabric from the loom shop in town, a very specific way we could have supported their community. We felt bad for that, but only slightly--nothing was quite what we were looking for.

So, here are some pictures from the trip:

From atop Chica Loca...note the lack of other horse's ass in my field of view:



Here's part of the view from the village:



Here's a shot of the main sapo. See the toad?



Here I am with Chica Loca:



Epilogue: When we were walking away from the horses and the trip, Corrie said that she wanted to give Princessa a tip. We'd already given our guide a tip, but Corrie had bonded with her philly and was inspired. I thought it would be cool too, so I decided to join suit, and we set out looking for something sweet to get them, like an apple or a carrot.

We found at a tiny market carrots as big as my wrist, which seemed a little excessive, but then we noticed they had apples. These apples, though, shocked us with their "Washington State" stickers. These were Pacific Northwest apples. That should have been a clue to what followed.

We returned with the apples and found the horses busy eating grass, noshing after a hard day of trekking gringos around the mountains. They turned down the apples--refused to even give them a lick.

Horses that won't eat apples? We couldn't comprehend. But they don't have apples in Honduras naturally--this is shown by the fact they have apples from four thousand miles away flown in. The caballero guide felt bad for us, since we tried to do something nice for the horses, which we gathered he didn't get very often. We kind of laughed and shrugged...not much else you can do at that point.