horse girl

I am in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay. It is a small fishing town that once I assume had just white washed thatch rooved houses and a lot of silence. Now the thatched rooved houses are very close together and spreading further than they should. It is not so quiet either, what with big buses always driving down the rutty dirt roads to drop off tourists and backpackers. There is still a certain magic to it, though it was hard for me to adapt to the whole ¨chilled-out¨ vibe that this town both sells and enacts. I am not chilled-out, not in the way that the people here would like me to be. When arriving at a beach, it has always been my practice to venture far from the crowds. This is something that I have been taught and it is something I continue to live by. In this case, it meant walking a very long ways over grassy dunes and shiny with mica volcanic boulders. I was rewarded. The water, the Atlantic, feels so lovely and warm and the air cool with wind. Though pleasant, surely, it is also a very dangerous combination. I awoke this morning with the worst sunburn of my life on the backs of my legs. I had generously applied sunscreen but as the hostel worker informed me, all the gas from the thousands of cows in Uruguay have depleted the ozone and so the sun is stronger here. Who knows if that is true, but today I was quite pink.
I had wanted to ride a horse. I rented one. A bit of a touristy gimmick, surely, but it was what I wanted. The two horse guides (one man, one woman) were lovely, fresh, unkempt and very relieved that I spoke spanish (or some). For the first time, I understood what it is that those horse girls, whom I had hated in my youth, were after. Riding a horse is so much more athletic and engaged than I had imagined. There is this sense of connecting with the animal in a very real way. I loved it.
My horse was pregnant. Her name was Baracha and I think that sometimes she looked sad, like she were preoccupied. We rode down the beach a far ways and then turned into some swampy forests where we let the horses wander around to gnaw at the branches while we drank wine. The mosquitoes were terrible and couldn´t help but think of all those vaccinations I did not get. Full of wine, we called the horses back through the dark and rode them down the shadowy beach. It was easier to gallop after the wine and I felt so happy just like those horse girls with the LisaFrank TrapperKeepers dreamed of feeling. I hope it will not be my last ride.