Horseback Riding and Beachside Sunsets
As per usual, I woke up about two hours before any of my friends. I get up and get ready so that when the others are wanting to use the shower, I can get our of their way. Before too long, my friend Autumn is awake and ready to find some breakfast. We head to the nearby convenience store to get some melon, pineapple, juice, and water for the day. She mentions that it's on her bucket list to ride horses on the beach. Apparently she used to train horses when she was in high school, and she misses it a lot. I said we can take a look at the tours that are advertised along our walk, and if the price is decent, I'd love to go with her. We find one kiosk that advertises for the horses. We look for the price, and although it wasn't horrible, we decided to keep looking just in case. We were in luck, because there was another tour service a few feet further down the road that had horseback riding for $10 less than the first one! We jumped at this chance, and set up a tour at 3pm that same day. We're both really excited!
By the time we get back, our other friends are stirring. We eat our breakfast at a table outside and wait until we hear voices from inside the room. We make plans to go get tickets for our return tomorrow, grab lunch, and they would go to the beach while Autumn and I were with the horses. We find the tickets without too much trouble, and find a small sandwich shop for lunch owned by this adorable Italian woman. Full of delicious food and ready for a nap, we head back to the hostel. We split into two groups: one for the beach, one staying in the hostel to rest. By the time Autumn and I are ready for our ride, the others are coming back form the beach. We are taken in a taxi to the horses, and we are ready to go!
I've ridden horses a couple of times, but never for more than 45 minutes. This ride on a gravel road winds up and down, and there are a few times when I think Uayacán, my horse, will slip, and we'll tumble down together. We ended up making it through without any major issues. He is a little bit of a sassafras, and sometimes he wanted to just stop on the path while other times misunderstood what I said to him (in Spanish), and moved along at a slow trot. We get to the beach and take some pictures there with our horses. We dismounted a little further off the beach and headed back to our hostel. The others were in the pool, and it was too warm not to join them for a few minutes before we headed back to the beach for the sunset.
I'm so happy that I figured out how to do a time lapse on my iPad. This sunset was stunning, and even though the colors are good on this camera, they're nothing compared to the hues that we saw that night. I think it took us all by surprise how beautiful this was. This is definitely a place that I want to go back to. It's going on my bucket list.