Two Americans in Chile

Glaspeys went over the mountain

So, our school has a lot of “extracurricular activities” for us to participate in, and they’re actually really cool. The first week we did this wine tasting class, all in Spanish…wow, I was clueless the WHOLE time, really. But the wine was good, and by the 3rd variety I didn’t much care what they were saying anyway.

Last weekend, the activity was a horse-back riding up in the Andes. Now, unless it is REALLY critical, everyone who works at the school and all information at the school is in Spanish (you would be surprised what they do not consider critical, and also what these people can do with their hands). Anyway, what this comes down to is that Jason and I usually have an IDEA of what is going on, but not exactly the whole story. So, we knew if we wanted to go, we needed to meet at the school at 9 am. No problem, we were there.

We checked with a couple other people in the van to make sure everyone thought we were going horse-riding, and that’s what they thought too. When we arrived at the farm, our program director asked something about caballos, which I was able to recognize as, “does anyone know how to ride a horse?” There were about 15 of us. No hands went up. But, we were a little distracted by our surroundings: a couple house-sized shacks with a sheet spread from the roof of one to the roof of the other creating a shaded patio, a barn-sized shack with some horses, all saddled up, tied to the 4 posts and a strand of barb wire. 2 of the 4 posts were adorned with goat skulls. We really wanted to bring the fresher one back for Juany, but we were in no position to negotiate.

Jason tried to explain that he could make their horse farm rank first of all horse-farms listed, but they didn’t seem to have much use for this idea. That’s when the goats came back down from pasture (or wherever they were) about 40 of them, big ones, little ones, black ones, white ones–in such a hurry they got the sheep all fired up and almost trampled the chickens. They went straight for the bathtub that was next to the horse corral, where the hose was constantly running.

Ok, everything was on the up and up at this point and we were ready to ride. So, this guy who looked a lot like Juan Valdez started pointing at people and pointing at horses. I haven’t been on a horse since I was about 7, and lifetime horse riding experience is under 5 hours, so I was a little uneasy on top of this live animal. I felt a lot better after our program director explained with lots of hand motions: when climbing steeply, lean forward, when coming down, lean back. “Tú estas el jefe,” she said (you are the boss). Right, left, stop. VAMOS.

And we were off. We went slow and the horse was obviously very familiar with the trail. It was steep though, and I was for payin’ attention. A few times I tried to pet my horse and let him know he was doin’ a good job. I mean, I’ve seen Horse Whisperer.

Then a few other times I tried to remind myself to look around at the incredible view and stop thinking about what will happen if the horse 2 inches in front of my horse falls down.

Whenever we stopped, both Jason’s horse and my horse liked to lay down. “Honestly,” I told my horse, “look around buddy, you got the lightest load here, what are you whining about?” The guides were even less subtle, with their swift kick to the horse’s stomach. But, we made it. And now we can always say we rode through the Chilean Andes on horseback. We even had a decent encounter with a condor while we were stopped at one of the vistas. The mountains really were incredible, layers and layers of them. Craggaly ones with lots of snow, and rocky ones with trees around the next bend.

I was grateful and relieved when we made it back to the goats and the director warmed the empanadas on the grill for our lunch. Yeah, now this is the life…