Cloud City to Colon, or How I Became Viggo Mortenson

Yesterday in class, the windows in my classroom were completely obscured as the heavy, white clouds rolled up the mountain. All I could think is that I was in Cloud City from "Empire Strikes Back", but I don’t think Lando ever had to put up with 90% humidity. It was in this weather that a group of 11 decided to walk down the winding road from UPeace to find the horse stables for a ride. It was about 5 minutes before I was drenched in my own sweat, only alleviated by the periodic downpour that would only last for a few minutes at a time. The stables were a short 15 minute walk from the university, but after arriving, they told us all his farmhands had gone home for the day, but that the horses would be ready tomorrow. At this point we had a choice. Wait an hour and a half for the 3 o’clock bus, or just walk back to town. After all, they told us it was only about 6 ½ kilometers (ended up being about 8), so how long could it take?

The answer to that question is 3 and a half hours. Admittedly there were a lot of stops to take pictures of the nature around us, but it was a crazy, stupid, steep (up and down) crawl. Along the way, we came across a man who lived in the middle of the mountain selling wood-carved souvenirs (seen below), but other than that it was 11 people with heavy school backpacks having a fun, but dehydrating march back to town on a road with no phones and no other way to get back. But, I finally have some photos to post from my trip as a result.


butterfly


catterpillars


some creek


end of the road, canopy below


after it cleared, more clouds coming from the south


***

Now, as for that horse ride today, here’s how that went.

The Ciudad Colon Crew managed to rally about 16 people for a horse ride down a trail about a kilometer south of UPeace. I got on the last horse, which looked white and scrawny. Let's call him "Asshole," for reasons that will be clear later. I started at the back of the 16 horse line, mostly struggling to get it to turn right and stay off the ditch to the side of the road (poorly aligned, maybe?). I managed to get about 60% of the horse direction wise, but it really wasn't interested in listening to my suggestions about speed. I gave it a few light heel bumps in the belly, and it would just stop to eat weeds. This went on for about ten or fifteen minutes, to the point that the guide at the rear of the line came back behind mine and hit my horse with a stick to get it going.

Apparently, this struck a chord with my horse because it began to walk faster, going from negative inertia to at least a modest trot. It slowly made its way to the middle, then the front of the pack, where it kept trying to get in the way of the only two experienced horse riders in our group of students. It would stand in front of them, then turn around and face backwards. Clearly, Asshole had some kind of superiority complex. Then, as the two better riders started to gallop, my horse started to get competitive and gallop with them. This was fun, but just as i was getting used to my ass bopping up and down on the saddle, a long green stick bug landed on my arm. By now, I'm accustomed to having unusual bugs land on me without warning, but this was no city stick bug. The horse had been regularly taking me through brush, so I figured it was probably just a branch, but when I saw its curious antenna touching and tapping at my arm, and realized that it stretched from my elbow to my wrist, I sort of yelped out like a schoolchild and brushed it to the ground. This was a poor decision and I now believe that horses do sense fear. The horse took off, as if I had whipped it in the ass and zoomed ahead of the pack. I went from a trot that I thought would leave my ass kind of sore to a speedy gallop. I felt like I mostly had it under control and the two good riders were able to catch up to me to tell me how to stop it, but yelling “ho!” and pulling on the reins only seemed to anger it. Eventually, they were able to ride up next to me and get their horses to stop, which seemed to cool my horse’s competitive juices, and he took about a 5 minute break to let the rest of the group catch up.

I took a minute to curse at Asshole, then spent the next four looking at where I was: waterfall to my right, vines all around me, bugs and birds louder than any I’d heard before, and an indescribable view of central Costa Rica. I didn’t have my camera, but I might go back again to capture that moment. For my first ride, I’m glad I didn’t have the camera, because as soon as I loosened my grip on the reins, the horse took off again. This time, there was no stopping Asshole. He was sprinting up a windy mountainside, completely obscured from the sun, with a long, leafy drop down the right of the trail that had no visible end. The other riders tried to catch up with me, but their horses couldn’t keep up. This Asshole decided he was the #1 horse back to the stable and didn’t really care what the “Ho!!!!”-ing rider had to say. I haven’t seen “City Slickers” in a long time, but this was kind of like that, only I was the stunt double and not a (still-funny at this time) Billy Crystal. It turned where it wanted to at forks in the road, didn’t slow down when darting in between a break in barbed wire fence, and I could no longer hear anyone behind me, or see anyone because of the winding road.

Up until this point, I hadn’t been pulling hard enough on the reins. Before we left, most of my lily-livered liberal companions at the stable were going on about how painful it is for the horse. When I realized that if I didn’t stop the horse, it would probably take me someplace I wouldn’t know how to get back from, I went from mildly terrified to moderately angry. I grabbed the reins hard and yanked it back against my thighs like I was told and leaned over to yell “HOOOOOOOOO!” (like santa claus, if santa claus had a rope in your mouth) into his ear. Asshole didn’t come to a full stop, but it slowed to a gallop long enough to shake its head angrily and take off again. We went back and forth at this, me yelling louder and sticking my slip-on vans deep into the stirrups and the horse shaking its head and trying to shake its head and make that weird angry braying sound. And ultimately, I won. The horse stopped; I had been holding the rope tightly enough that I pulled a lot of skin off my fingers, but I broke that m-effer. I got him to turn around and go back the way we came and eventually I caught up with the group of 5 riders that had broken off from the slow horses at the back of the pack. Apparently, the horses know the trail and had been going the right way all along. So with the confidence that I owned this Asshole, the front-five galloped the rest of the way home, with my horse leading the way (with me about 80% in control). I was like Viggo Mortenson in "Hidalgo," teaching them Arabs a lesson. And that’s how Costa Rica made me the rancher my lineage had meant for me to be; on some rural Mexican farm, in a parallel universe, I would have been yelling the Spanish equivalent of “Ho!”

Now, there’s been a lot of hyperbole in this post and it kind of has the tone of one of those crazy fish stories no one can ever really corroborate, so let me put things in perspective, using math. The trail was advertised at just over an hour. I spent the first ten minutes getting my horse to stop eating before it decided to race. I arrived at the stables and checked my watch. The last pack of horses came in 25 minutes later. This means, my horse took me around a 1 hour+ trail in about 35 minutes, probably about half the time. I may have only been in control for the last ten, but that was the scariest, yet the best $10 I’ve spent… ever?

This entry was posted by VJ, on Thursday, July 19, 2007. You can leave your response.