The reason why I walked like a ancient person (part 2)

We pulled up to the horse ranch and got out to go sign the paperwork stating if we died it was not the ranch's fault.

I watched as they pulled out 4 horses for us. There was a really cute brown one that looked super sleepy and I kind of hoped I got that one. There was also another one that kept biting the ones next to it. I told Sazy that I didn't want that horse.
Guess which horse I got? UGH

Sazy ended up with the sleepy horse.
We started down the trail and my horse Mariposa wanted to go slow. So slow that the other horse would be far ahead of me.
Then our lovely little guide Juan would smack my horse on the ass and send it trotting up to the group.
This happened over and over and over for the entire trip.

You can see him in that picture. Now Juan didn't speak a bit of english. But he held an entire conversation with me that included singing at me and telling me to throw my arm up in the air and say ride um cowboy. Which if I did he would wack my horse on the ass again sending it into a bone breaking trot.
I think I bitched the entire ride even though I kept telling myself to shut up.
At one point I said out loud "I think I hate you Juan" at which point Sazy starts cracking up.
Sazy, Boonie and Jay all had these really nice horses. They walked all nice. Didn't stop. They were good. Juan never went near them.
At one point Mariposa walked under a tree to knock me off. You know that is the second time a horse has done that to me.
My horse would come to a dead stop for no reason. I began to hate Mariposa. Because stopping meant Juan was coming over to wack my horse.
See this picture? This is how it was the entire trip. All of them together all happy chatting with me way way way in the back being chatted to in Spanish that I don't understand but knowing in about 3 seconds I am going to be trotting.

And here is another where we are actually together.... sort of... notice Juan... and me.... UGH

We walked for quite a bit before it was time to go down to the beach.
There was no where on this ride or at the stable that said "By the way when it is time to go on the beach your horse is going to walk directly towards a cliff and then start to go down a little tiny death path"
I might have skipped the whole horse thing had there been.
As my horse reached the point of no return I could see Sazy looking at me like OH CRAP. See we had spent the time before Boonie and Jay got there talking (and showing her) how deathly afraid of heights I am.
Needless to say I closed my eyes and held on and swore to god I would never ever do this again.
Once we were on sand it was beautiful. Riding a horse while the waves crashed on the beach. It was stunning.
I told Juan to go "ride Um cowboy" to Jay. Juan looked at the three people up ahead and I yelled at Jay to raise his hand. He probably thought I was crazy but he did it.
Juan rode up to him and they started to trot. Which of course started us all trotting. I yelled to Saz that it was a good thing I couldn't have children because this would have broke me.
Did I mention that as a dog was running by Juan looks at me and tells me Careful because Mariposa eats dogs.
WTF
My horse eats dogs. Great. Love that.
At the end of the beach we had to go up this little pathway. The pathway up was a thousand times better then the pathway down. Although I did feel like I was going to slip off my horse.

Look at how cute Boonie and Jay are


Back on the trail to get to the stables I was pretty sure all the damn trotting I was doing was going to make me pee my pants. Turns out all of us women felt like that.
I was never so happy in my whole life as when we came to the stable.
But I learned (and Sazy too) real quick that getting OFF the horse was going to be a big problem. When we finally did get off the horse our knees felt like someone had hit them with hammers. We walked bow legged and stiff. We looked like little ancient people.
Today however I feel like I was run over by a truck. Everything is killing me lol

Then we were off to the restuarant for dinner.

We drove up the coast a bit to get to the restuarant to eat dinner. We arrived around 4:20 and they didn't start serving dinner until 5. So we decided to walk down to the beach and take a look around.
We started off across the street.

We then took the little hike down these steps to get to the beach. It stunk so damn bad on the way down.
At one point Jay turns around and looks at me and said that last step was really soft.
I looked down and he had stepped on a dead seal. You couldn't really see it because it was covered in sand but it was definately a dead seal. BLICK
We walked down the beach and looked at shells and watched the incoming sunset. That was something Boonie had wanted to do. See the sunset. I was glad that Sazy and I could give that to her.

Jay enjoyed all aspects of the beach including the seaweed. In fact I think that he was kind of facinated with the seaweed lol.

I enjoyed playing at tour guide and pulling what I consider useless information out of my ass.
Here are us girls on the beach.

Sazy and I learned why Boonie is almost always wearing sunglasses in her pictures. She can't seem to keep her eyes open for photos lol.
On the way back we saw another dead seal. I have to wonder if it was shark attacks or what.
We decided it was time to head back up to the restuarant. Of course this meant going back by that damn dead seal.
I was so paranoid about it that I actually lost my step and almost fell on top of it. As it was all I could think was great I am going to dinner smelling like death. Oh freaking joy.
Thank god Jay's foot hadn't gone through the seal or I didn't end up laying down on top of it. I came close though *shudders.
We got up to the restaurant and sat down to order. First thing I did was wash my hands to get rid of that OMG I HAVE DEATH ON MY HANDS feeling.
We had a lovely view of the ocean and setting sun. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what to eat and it seemed that Jay was having a bit of that same trouble. We both ended up getting a bowl of soup and an appetizer. It was yummy.
It was kind of sad to see the evening come to a close.
But looking back there was not one strange moment. We never felt like strangers. More like relatives that hadn't seen each other in a long time. We enjoyed the company.

Sazy and I laughed and laughed on the way home about how much fun we had had. We laughed at the horses and the tidepools and our beach walk.