La Réunion

We went horseback riding in the mountains one morning. I'm actually posting the last photo first, because it's the best...

At about the midway point of our three-hour ride, we arrived at this gorgeous valley where we could see five or six small waterfalls up above as the mountains disappeared into the clouds. That's D on the far right.

Choosing helmets (are they called helmets?) in the office before the ride. That's M, me, and P.

Horse!

Horses!

Here we are just after starting out. M has the camera and that's me in the white shirt near the front.

Me again.

That's our instructor/guide in the red shirt. He was super friendly but I could hardly understand a word he said, since he spoke French with a thick Creole accent. I'd never been on a horse before, and this guy could certainly tell. When he explained to the group how to handle the reins, he spoke for about two minutes but the only words I understood were "gauche" (pulls left), "droite" (pulls right), and "arrete" (pulls back); obviously this is all French 101 stuff. But all the details and intricacies were completely lost on me; how do I make the horse go faster? How do I make him stop eating grass instead of walking? When he saw that Marjorie was trying to quickly explain a few things I'd missed, he cheerfully asked, "You speak English?" and I said, "Yes!" and then he said, "left, right, stop" (pulls left, pulls right, pulls back), "Ok? Allez!" (Let's go!) Great, thanks. I missed the stuff about how to move with the horse when it's running so as to not bruise your ass and, more importantly, not fall off, but I wouldn't know I'd missed that important stuff 'til later when my ass was killing me and I was desperately trying to not fly off of the horse.

This is the valley from the first picture above. We actually got to ride across the inner edge of that lake, through about three feet of water, which was really fun and adventure-y.

There's M taking a picture of her parents, not shown.

Horseback riding was great, and after I'd figured out all the stuff I missed in the beginning, I had a wonderful time. This is now something I hope to do again in the future when I'm doing any kind of vacation in and around nature-y stuff. Hopefully my ass won't hurt for days afterward the next time. I have this great memory of scuba diving the next morning and being completely blown away by how beautiful and exotic and strange everything was, and at the same time I couldn't stop thinking, "God damn my ass hurts..."

Next: Part 8 — Le Cirque de Salazie