Saturday 21 November 1998
The trip to Monteverde on horses was terrible, not because of rain, not because of insects, not because of chafing the thighs of gringos, but because the horses were treated like crap! They didn't have enough food or water, and they weren't scrubbed down at the end, and the trail was so steep and so muddy that they could barely make it! They were whipped, yelled at, forced to go. In some sort of horrible group-psychology, none of us complained to the horse-slave drivers.
Despite all this, the landscape was fabulous all the way.
Prior to the horse ride, we took a boat across a lake (Lake Arenal?) and I took some pics of the scenery as we went by.
When I first got on my horse, everything seemed fine, though I noticed he was dirty. Hmm.. Maybe he just rolled around in the dirt when he was wet. I didn't worry about it.
Everyone got a horse and everyhorse got a person and we left. I took a pic of Arenal Vista Lodge.
We crossed a river three times on the trip. This is the part where it was shallowest.
A few times, and mostly toward the end of the ride, I was ahead of the group. I truly think my horse was able to go faster than the others because I let him take a break whenever he wanted, and I was continually saying "you can do it" as we trudged up the terrible muddy trails, and I congratulated him when we got to the top of each one.
Despite the crappy conditions, the scenery was beautiful. We walked along a ridge with a beautiful view across a valley.
The following is one of my most prized pictures. Not because it is so beautiful or anything to do with its artistic merits in any capacity. It's so special to me because I had just changed my roll of film while crossing the river. Camera open in one hand. Finished film in my other hand. New film in my other hand. Holding the reins with my knees, crossing a deep river, on a horse I had never previously met.
I loaded the film, turned around, and got this shot. I had just been right there changing the film in my camera!
This was the third river crossing.
This is the best picture I have to indicate how narrow some of the trails were. The lump on the lower left corner is a big lump. There were times when I could literally put my feet down on the dirt and lift myself off my horse's back to help him climb up the steep trails, and we had a lot further to go.
I felt so badly for my horse. He had turned from dirty mud color to black horse sweat color.
We had climbed so far up that soon we were riding through fog. To me, this gave a comforting warm blanket around everything. At this point of the trip we didn't have to go uphill for a while.
There were several cows in and around the trail.
Finally, the trek was over. It had begun to rain near the end, so people sported the wet look while we rested in the bar at the top of the mountain.
After the trip, we were taxied to Santa Elena, where we had to wait for our luggage to arrive on a bus called "Invincible." I slept for about almost an hour while we waited. I'm surprised and sorry I didn't take a picture of the bus. It was quite colorful, and had certainly seen a lot of road.
