Horseback riding

Today was a great day. I went horseback riding for the first time in my life. 2 americans who now live in santiago, who by the way are leftist anarchists started this horseback riding tour company in the heart of rural santiago. We started at 7:30 in the morning and after a lovely breakfast of hot strawberry pie and home grown and ground coffee we each got a horse to ride solo on our way up to the el mirador. Along with me were 2 american teachers living in brooklyn, new york, my co-worker who is a physician assistant and 2 other gals one from holland the other studying to be a school counselar in iowa. It turns out that one of the girls who teaches, grew up in Greenville and graduated from USC in 2001. She even knew a few of the ppl I knew back in college. what a small world.

The horseback riding was amazing . The horse I was on was about 2-3 years old and was quite a naughty fellow. All he wanted to do was graze on grass and take paths that was different from our possee of horses. We rode through coffee trees, corn fields, guava trees and various other flora and fauna until 1.5 hours of uphill climbing we reached the el mirador which overlooked lake atitlan on one side and the pacific ocean on the other. What a beautiful site. The trek down was even more fun, and at the bottom we were treated to a wonderful lunch of rum, cinnamon marinated pineapple with waffles, eggs and fresh strawberry jam. It just made my day.

Yesterday, I took the 45 min boat ride to panachel to branch out from rural santiago for a bit, and wow it definately felt like I was back into civilization. I even had pizza for lunch which was nice for my stomach and I could tell my stomach was pretty happy to have some familiarity basting around in it´s hydrocholoric acid.