Posts Tagged ‘horses’

We’re having such a wonderful time here in New Jersey!  It’s pretty amazing to be living in a house for a little while again, speaking a language we know well, and getting to spend a lot of time with family.  We’ve even managed to have some adventures, a haircut, and a bit of new clothing!

A few days ago we went down to Cape May, a nice town in the far south of New Jersey.  It is one of the best birdwatching places in the US and since my dad was with us we got to see a lot of different birds – 80 species in the same day!  We had a guest photographer, my mom, since she is looking at cameras for when she meets up with us in Africa, so all of the photos in this post were taken by her.

Hundreds of birds at Cape May

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On the way we stopped off at a nature reserve for the first of many birdwatching expeditions.  My dad is an avid birdwatcher and we were determined to help him see as many of Chile’s birds as possible.  He was full of interesting information.  For example, there is less species variation in the southern hemisphere, so in all of Chile there are not many more species than on the small island near Seattle where he lives!  We took an informed bet as to how many species we would see in ten days.  I guessed 93, my dad guessed 115, and Justin was optimistic with a guess of 119.

This first stop was at the Reserva Nacional Lago Peñuelas and we had some good sightings.  There are additional bird photos if you click any of these for the link to the gallery.

Horses in the reserve

Check out Part 1 here!

After a good sleep in the tent we had a yummy breakfast prepared by Boris and then set off for our second day of riding. This day we took about a 3 hour ride around the Laguna Amarga which is a large, green, saltwater lake.

Flamingos on Laguna Amarga

The weather was overcast and really windy at times, but we still got wonderful views of the lake. These horses were so steady and we had an awesome time riding over all of the different terrains. A really amazing confidence builder for me since I had a really nasty crash off a horse a few years ago and haven´t ridden much since. The horses were so well behaved and took all of the wildlife and crazy terrain completely in stride. Justin was incredible even though he hasn’t ridden that much and even managed a long trot on one of the beaches on top of about nine hours in the saddle in two days!

Throughout our trip, Hazel and I have been planning a few bigger trips to mix in with our more everyday low-cost hiking and hosteling adventures.  We’ve been keeping an eye out for a horseback ride that sounded exceptional, as Hazel in particular has wanted to get back on a horse again ever since her accident over two years ago.  Well, it took almost 3 months, but we finally found one in Criollo Expeditions.  They advertise a number of different trips on their website, but one in particular struck our fancy: an overnight trek at the fabulous Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

The company turned out to be a family operation.  We called hoping to come to their office to talk about our possible riding options, and were surprised to be invited to the home of Magan and Boris Radich outside Puerto Natales where we got to see one of their herds and chat about riding.  We decided to depart in two days (Monday the 28th) and raced home to prepare for the other impending adventure – the 5 days of hiking in Torres del Paine known as the “W”.  I’ll talk about that in another post!

Monday morning arrived and Boris pulled up (right to our fabulous hostel “The Singing Lamb“) in his 4×4 truck with our box lunches and a happy greeting.  It was really wonderful that Boris drove us to the park, since he was able to point out the owls, eagles, foxes, guanacos (Patagonian llamas), ñandu (Patagonian ostriches, also known as Rhea), and caracaras that we saw.  This was just on the trip to the park!  We couldn’t believe how much we saw, besides the normal sheep and horses you might expect in a wide open landscape like the one that leads to the mountains.  Boris was raised in nearby mountains at a remote ranch and he knew all sorts of information relating to the history, flora and fauna, and geography of the entire region.

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