Horseriding: Bolivia style

I woke excited to remember I had booked another horseride - this time 5 hours - in Tupiza, the little town famed for its rides through the desert landscape. I got even more excited when I picked up my cowboy boots from the old bootmaker I randomly stumbled upon late the night before, who had replaced my soles with no dramas at all. By this stage they were absolutely fucked - a hole all the way through on one of them - but when I had tried to fix them in London I was told they were beyond repair. Well, $7.50 took care of that theory!

So me, my new boots and my new friends grabbed a quick fix of empanada before the ride - a food we can only buy in the morning here because nothing is heated at night for some reason - and congregated with countless Israelis and other tourists we had all booked together with. After much confusion about who was going where, we eventually got piled into a bus to the horse place down the road, where more confusion ensued about who was riding which horses.

EVENTUALLY, we were all on board and I found myself at the front of the pack on a spritely little horse I later learnt was just 2 years old (common practice for South America, breaking in this early). The other horses were max 4 years old. I found myself wondering what happened to all the others older than this. I stopped the thought midway.

I had told them sternly I wanted a horse with energy and that they gave me. Kicking was not necessary for Rosilo, he huffed n puffed his way along the track as my arms formed new muscles with the force of holding him back. When the occasion came that I felt the need to run a little faster, he went from walk to full gallop instantly. I discovered he had just 2 speeds - pacing (trot/walk) and galloping. Fine with me! They are just lucky I had the ability to stop him (although that said, my method was basically just to hurtle him towards a cactus).

The guides were all young boys, although not as young as they looked, and they didn`t really give a shit. But we still had fun, the horses weren`t emancipated as I thought they would be, and I was cordened off with 3 other guys - the hot Swiss, the hot Dutch and another nice Dutch guy slightly less hot. Still, the odds were indeed stacked in my favour here. At least I was grateful not to have the group of screaming Israeli girls.

We stopped a couple of times in canyons and gullies, all the while snapping picture after picture of the beautiful scenery around us. Again with the red rock mountains and desert flora, but I just can`t get sick of it. Not yet. Ask me again after Bolivia.

All in all, the actual riding time was probably about 4 hours, not 5, but I was happy to pay for 5 if it meant the horses got such long breaks. It was HOT out there! I felt a bit bad that there were no places to let them drink. But they had energy the entire ride, so I gotta give them snaps for that.

We ended at a random place on the side of the road, after a slight bolt-off completely caused by our young guide who started cantering towards home on the final stretch. IDIOT! None of the boys had ridden ever before, and so of course they all almost lost complete control and I was of course bolting off ahead not knowing it wasn`t allowed. Stop stop, he yells! Well maybe think twice about cantering home then, fool. We got off at this random place, not knowing what was happening, until he said, "you`re ok to walk back to the hotel, right?" Uhh, I guess so. Where are we?

I didn`t tip the guide.

I came back to my hostel to take my beer bottles back to the shop for my deposit and found they had been taken by someone, so I lost the deposit which - when converted - is not that much, but at the same time could have been my next bus ticket, meal or hostel. So I was pissed. Tried to sort something out with the hostel, considering it was obvious the cleaner took them, but no such luck. In the end, figured it was just a tip for the staff for their FANTASTIC service. Go figure.

Later that day, the town was beginning its preparations for the centenary of Tupiza, which happened to be at the exact time of my visit, so there were people selling balloons and fairy floss, kids running around everywhere, students in full uniform, marching bands (rehearsing all morning in the hall NEXT to our hostel) and all the rest that generally comes with these types of celebrations.

The sun went down, I ate dinner with the lovely (and hot) Dutch guy from horseriding, and then the group of us found ourselves searching for somewhere to buy beer to drink on the street. Except something odd was going on. There were no such places. No one was drinking. At all. After enjoying some of the (sober) activities around the plaza, we opted for the bar we had walked past earlier and sat down to share a bottle of Singani, the local alcohol. Like Tequila, they said, but I don`t think so... add some ginger ale and we`re good to go.

After a small episode with a drunk local, which saw us lose 2 of our drinks to his clumsy hand, we moved onto another place... one of the clubs. On the way, I drunkenly invited some local boys (and I mean boys - 18 mostly) to the club too and we all sat around the empty space, drinking and waiting for the "rush" to come. Well, it didn´t come and we got sick of waiting. So we moved back towards the plaza to find something else to do.

That something else ended up being going halves in a massive (10lt or something) bottle of mixed drink - a super sweet concoction of something alcoholic and basically sugar - which we started to consume before realising we were not actually 18 anymore and we didn`t need to hide in the plaza away from the cops and share a massive bottle of hideously pubescent substances. Next!

So we broke off from the young`uns, pretending to be tired, and headed back to a place I like to call "El calle de los borrachos". Now THIS was where the drunks were... So we fitted right in. By this stage, it was just me, the hot Swiss and the hot Dutch - again, I was feeling pretty happy about this situation.

We started mingling with the locals - memory gets a little hazy by this stage - and drinking some local drink served warm (or with milk), and at one point found myself being promised a free horseride with one of the neighbours at 11am the next day. Well, that never happened, but it was worth a try.

We were hungry - again - by some hour of the morning so we huddled around the fire of a choripan man, and ate sausage with thick skin that went down an absolute treat. Then we swayed back down the road to our hostel and I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow. Still managed to wake up to Swiss boy, T, screaming German in his sleep again. Ahh, still makes me laugh, every time.