Saturday

As we hopped into the vehicles to go to the horses this morning, Marie noticed that Maria Elena had a nearly flat tire. She is always alert to this, she said later, because if her car gets a flat tire in a bad neighborhood in Haiti she could have a big problem. Anyway, Maria Elena was able to get the nail removed and the leak patched at a local garage quickly – for 10 euros.

The horses clearly knew it was the last day. Much more energetic and enthusiastic. Except for Maria Elena’s horse, who refused to be tacked or mounted without great effort. Because he'd never been on one of these rides before, Maria Elena reasoned that he probably thought he’d be doing this for the rest of his life, walking in a line with a bunch of horses he didn’t know. The others understood that pastures and grass and freedom were in store in the coming week (they would go out again the following week) but I guess they didn’t tell the new horse. Other than that he was very sweet.

It was considerably drier and scrubbier and the sun shone hard. I had solved my eye problem, though, by deploying my (Air France) sleep mask as a kind of pirate patch. It worked very well.

The aperitivo was at a raised area where we could look out across the park. We were already feeling nostalgic.

And then we rode a full two hours before the last lunch, meaning that we actually had a chance to feel a few little hunger pans. I managed to down three courses and desserts, with two kinds of wine of course, and didn’t even feel overly stuffed. Several other riders said the same and agreed it was worrying.

We took a narrow cut through the cliffs and reached the beach in 15 minutes or so. It was high tide and there were quite a few bathers (some of them in the nude. `They’re the ones who didn’t win Mr. World Andalusia West,’ said Maria Elena) and fishers, but we still got in two canters under the towering red sandstone cliffs. The horses were great, very controllable even though they were really excited.

Some were even willing to get their feet wet, scampering in and out as the waves came in.












Philippe, as always, took a fantastic video.

Then Alfonso turned into a parking lot and up a hill and boom! There was the horse van waiting for us. The horses were loaded and gone within 30 minutes, headed back to Alfonso’s. I felt like I had when my kids went to college (well, a little).

At dinner we exchanged emails and contacts and, equally important, promised to share photos. And many, many thanks, to Marie Lievre, Philippe Tirel and Angele Khawly for their wonderful pictures and Philippe especially, for the videos.