Today started with something unexpected for the students – we love surprising them! We couldn’t shake their comments about not wanting to ride horses after seeing the Gauchos in town yesterday. So, we arranged (on the sly) for them to go horseback riding today in the wilderness. In fact, we didn’t even tell them what they were doing until they arrived at the ranch. You might be imagining a nice trot through a national park… but we had something else in mind. This was serious horse trekking, led by an authentic Gaucho. We tromped through shin-deep slippery mud, raced through rivers up to the horses’ knees, and traversed barely-there trails on the side of steep mountains.
As we rode we were looking out over 65 hectares of national park and snow covered mountains, and upon reaching a scenic high point, turned and trekked back down to the sea, looking across toward the mountains of Chile just across the bay. At the end, all of the students gained incredible confidence on the horses, galloping along at speed. The horses rewarded themselves at the end of the ride by splashing around in the sea.
We’ve all had lunch now, and the busses that will take us to our ship, The Ushuaia, have pulled up in front of the hotel. We’ll be heading out at about 4pm our time, which is three hours behind Irish time. So think of us at seven o’clock! We’ll be gliding through the bay and out into the open ocean tonight.
