Celine Dion music video...

I have to describe my horse adventure because it was SO MAGICAL and something I will always remember! There was one night in Punta Del Diablo where I felt really well, so we decided to ride horses on the beach. I was with the four other girls I went to Uruguay with and we were all thrilled to do something different, other than stay at the hostel. We walked to the "sister" hostel that was near ours- it was only about two blocks, mind you this town is all dirt roads, very remote and peaceful. The only noise is the ocean! We waited for quite a while for our "gaucho"/tour guide to arrive, all anticipating how comical it would be to see a man with five horses coming up the dirt road. Finally after what seemed like an hour a man with 6 horses in total shows up, jumps off his white horse and yells to us "HOLA!!!!". He had a huge grin on his face and a cigarette in the side of his mouth.

All the horses!




It took us a few minutes to get situated on our horses, but we finally succeeded. The Gaucho asked who was the most experienced rider, I lied and said that I wasn't (even though I had taken many years of lessons when I was a youngster). It's not a comforting thing to hear that the most experienced rider needed to ride "Borracho". Borracho was the brown horse with streaks of black, his name meaning "Drunk". I purposefully did not take any of the feistier horses because I always end up with the crazy ones, and there have been too many experiences of me falling off. I ended up riding "Rosarino" and just my luck, he was the slowest horse EVER. He just walked along, doing his thing regardless of whether or not I was kicking him to move faster. He could have cared less because he stopped every ten seconds to eat grass.

Me and Rosarino:



Our walk was through a beautiful and private national park full of palm trees and some roaming cows. Being high on a horse at sunset with nothing to worry about on a Wednesday evening was a freeing state of mind. After about 10- minutes of riding, I became really comfortable again on the horse as did my friends. We went down some steep sand hills, these were the only times I was ever timid. Once we came out of the park we arrived on the beach just as the sun was setting- and you can only imagine how beautiful that was...




For some reason "Gaucho" thought it would be fun to trot with his horse. If one horse did something then all the others would follow. Without having to even kick my horse to make him move, he took off. It was a blast; trotting on a remote beach at sunset with my new friends and the most BEAUTIFUL weather!! We rode for quite a bit on the beach and then back into the national park. We went pretty deep into the park before we took a break. We each hopped off of our horses and sat at a little table in a tiny cove amongst the trees. Gaucho tied the horses together and just let them roam.....they ended up walking extremely far away from us but they are trained really well so they didn't "run away"

Little Cove:






Being in the little green cove was amazing. We sat there for about an hour, had two bottles of wine, smoked some cigarettes that Gaucho rolled himself- no filters or anything-it's very typical to do that here. We spoke in Spanish and made jokes with our new friend, this was his life job and he loved every minute of it. We sat and chatted for a long time until it became quite dark. We rounded up the horses...who were hilarious and very far away from us meandering around. At this point, we had finished two bottles of wine and were feeling great! The sun had completely gone and there were NO lights in the park whatsoever. We basically rode the horses through the national forest/park in the PITCH BLACK. All I could see was the black outlines of the palm trees against the deep blue and starry sky!! It was UNREAL. Hands down the most magical thing I have ever experienced (deep, I know). We rode in the darkness and silence for about two hours! The sky literally looked like fairy dust I wanted to reach out and feel the individual twinkly stars. We rode through the forest- totally trusting Gaucho and our horses(I literally could not see my hand in front of me). Upon arriving on the beach again, the horses TOOK OFF and it was incredible. They began trotting and then galloping quite fast. The moon reflecting on the ocean,the starry sky touching the horizon of the ocean and riding horses in complete darkness(felt like we were flying) was an indescribable experience.




After sending this exact blog post as an email to my family a few weeks ago, my brother's only response was "Ha ha this email is ridiculous! I'm imagining some Celine Dion music video as you gallivant in the surf at dusk"- I couldn't have said it better myself! It WAS a video- totally unreal in how amazing it was!