Horse Back Riding

Getting there

My mom and I have always been good riding buddies, so we decided while we were in La Paz we were going to ride. So we woke up at 5:00 AM and got on a 6:30 shuttle to Todos Santos for a morning beach ride.  We traveled through the desert for about an hour. When we reached the station, we had a light breakfast at a lovely place just down the road.

Off to a good start

  Betsy, a lady from the ranch, arrived to pick us up about an hour later. We had a lovely ride over with our noses filled with the essence of horses and manure. When we arrived, our teacher, Kaia, had the horses tacked up and ready to go, which was a special treat because usually we handle that. Some of the horses we rode where Azteca horses. Azteca it a breed of horse that is part Quarter horse, part Andalusian and part Criollo horse.

The beach

    The beach is a wide very, very long surface, it starts out flat at first, but starts to slope near the waters edge. It was full of wildlife as well. We saw a turtle’s nest, a whale and two sea lions!

A gallop

    We walked, trotted and cantered, though not for long. As soon as we picked up a canter, our horses immediately wanted to gallop, so we let them. Now I imagined it being pretty fast, a lot faster that a canter, but it's not all that bad - actually it's amazing. Kaia did say though, that since we where on sand, it would seem similar to a canter. So there we were, flying across the beach; I'm surprised I didn't get bugs in my mouth!  We galloped 3 more times after that, and they were all incomparable!  

 

Heading back

    After the excitement, we headed back to the stables, where we helped clean up.  We washed all the horses and fed them lunch; you'd be surprised how sweaty all the horses were! After that we took the hour shuttle ride back and definitely took showers ourselves!