I spent my day off this week doing a 7 hour horse trek in Glenorchy, a small town (pop. 250) about an hour outside of Queenstown. I had been saving up for this excursion using money from teaching classes so when Sean saw it listed for half price on an online coupon site, I was all in.
Spending all day riding around the scenic mountains and rivers of the South Island New Zealand back country was pure bliss. I rode with a German girl who was very experienced at horseback riding and a girl from Hong Kong who had signed up for the all-day ride and had never been on a horse before. A bold move. Because of this, we had two guides; one guide (Casey) stuck with the newbie and the other guide (Annabelle) rode with us and let us do all the running that we wanted to.
We arrived at High Country Horses at 9 in the morning after being picked up in Queenstown at 8. They talked to each of us about our experience and then assigned us one of their 45 horses. I was assigned a giant beast of a horse called "Tank" (hmm, maybe I haven't lost as much weight as I thought if they took one look at me and gave me a horse named Tank). Tank is a "Stationbred" which is a New Zealand way of saying that he is a workhorse mutt probably consisting of a lot of different kinds of draft horses. Tank was only just broken in last summer and he was still a little bit rusty on commands. He was also tremendously strong and it was all I could do at times to control him.
We ended up cantering and galloping a lot which was fun but also tiring since I hadn't used the muscles for riding in a looong time. Also, Tank's mane was shaved which made it a little difficult to stay on as there was nothing to grab onto. For instance, when we were tearing through a patch of trees, we spooked a cow which jumped out into the trail in front of us. Tank just about jumped out of his hooves and I almost flew off but managed to stay on by wrapping my arms around his neck like a monkey. It took awhile for the heart rate to come down after that one.
We rode until lunch time and then stopped for a picnic that was packed by the stables. We listened to our main guide, Casey, talk about life on the farm. She was about my age and was the daughter of the woman who had started the business in 2000. Before that, they had lived in near Christchurch and had a guiding business taking tourists out to swim with dolphins. Tough gig, right? First growing up swimming with dolphins and now riding horses every day in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Casey talked a lot about the natural history of the area and pointed out a lot of plants, trees and birds that we saw along the way. She also showed us some of the places where they filmed some of the Narnia series, the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and Wolverine. Some of the horses on their ranch were used in the making of the Lord of the Rings (Casey said they all had their own stylists and everything!)
We were blessed with perfect weather, good company and a pretty amazing backdrop for a great day of riding. When we got back to the farm, we got to meet the rest of the farm animals including a number of sheep, cows, pigs, ducks, geese, cats and dogs. I had such a good time that I can't wait to go back and do it again soon. Too bad that tomorrow I am going to be unbelievably sore. I love horses!
This is the trek that I'm saving money for too! I was gutted that I didn't get to go over Christmas when we were there. If you come up to Akl I'll have to take you riding on the west coast beaches. Seems like you guys are doing well. You're blog brings back memories of all the differences we noticed when we arrived. love it! -sarah (ken also says hi)
VERY jealous! Looks like an amazing time!