Horseback Riding and the Occasional Sprinkle

One of my site mates is an avid horseback rider in the states. She mentioned to our youth group that she rode horses back in the states and the girl mentioned that she has horses. My site mate was overjoyed when the girl invited us to go riding. We were supposed to go last Sunday but unexpectedly my site mate’s host family had planned a full-day outing to the beach so we had to cancel.

Wednesday, May 1, is Labor Day here and pretty much the whole country takes the day off. Since the schools were closed, the students had off and so did we. I received a text at 7:00AM, which is practically mid-morning here since most days my host family and I are up before 5:00AM. I am still not sure why we get up so early. The text asked if we were going to come to her town to ride horses in the afternoon. I immediately texted my three site mates and two responded back quickly that they were interested in going around 2pm. So by 7:15AM, we made plans to meet her the parque central in Nandasmo at 2. 

Another joven from our youth group decided to join us so the 5 of us took a mototaxi to the meet up with the joven with the horse at the park. We all dressed in jeans and sneakers ready to ride. We were warned that there would only be one horse since the other was sick. But we were excited about the experience. As we were sitting at the park, rain drops started falling from the sky. It was the first daytime rain I have experienced in Nicaragua. And it was more like occasional drops, not even enough to consider it drizzling.

We passed the joven’s house and then the house where the horse lives. The joven said that we should go for a hike before we take the horse out. We walked down a beautiful dirt path for about 30 minutes. Most of the way, my site mates were asking me if I thought we were ever going to ride horses since it seemed like we were walking to nowhere. It definitely felt like we were just walking to waste time. But we had some good times in the process, climbing trees, taking pictures, and throwing things at a mango tree to get the mangoes to fall.

Eventually we turned around and went back to the house with the horse. My horse loving site mate rode first. The Nicas suggested that the two of us ride together but it was clear she wanted to ride alone. We all took turns. Interestingly, the joven with the horse wanted to ride with me so the two of us rode on the one person saddle, me in front and her behind. We took the horse down the trail we had previously walked down and back. After everyone had a turn, the horse lover rode her again and we all headed back. We thanked the horse owner and joked with each other about how we had initially thought there was no horse. 

It was an awesome way to spend Labor Day, especially after a full morning of group work and homework.