Travel Journal

Wah Gwan Jessetters,

Today was my last day in Jamaica and prior to my arrival, I had researched the opportunity to swim with the horses. Being that I’m always down for some sort of adventure, I thought “hey, why not”. Sidebar, four scores and many years ago I had a very scary horseride experience and vowed to never get on a horse again. I had taken a horseWALK with a group when all of a sudden my horse takes off galloping full speed ahead as if we were in the Kentucky Derby and I was the experienced female jockey aiming for first place. I’m flopping up and down holding on for dear life and screaming. The trainer told me to stop screaming because I was scaring the horse. I said “well the horse is scaring me.” I pulled the reins and the horse started to eventually slow down. That day I vowed to never get on a horse again. Well fastforward to now. While looking on the website of the hotel, I saw the beautiful pictures of folks swimming with horses and for a moment forgot about my brush with death many years ago. For those who have given birth, it’s kinda like after going through the pains of childbirth, you say “I’m not having anymore kids” but after sometime goes by, you completely forget about the pain and decide you want to have more. So my horse experience went just like that. After seeing the pictures, I decided, I guess I could try this again.

My friend and I got ready and headed out to meet the horses. On our way to the stable we had to walk through some woods, we were then greeted by a donkey tied to the tree. We were stuck at a standstill, like how are we going to get around this donkey? Is he going to buck at us? Have we gone the wrong way? Everything just seemed so wrong about this donkey in the middle of our path to awesomeness. My friend said “come on lets go” so we decided to work our way around this donkey. Low and behold the donkey let us pass. As we walk just a couple steps more, we hear and see barking dogs running towards us. At this point, my heart has dropped into my stomach and both of us are like WTF, we are about to be mauled by dogs. So now we are in between the dogs running after us and the donkey that we struggled to get past in the first place. I thought to myself “F**k it, i’ll take my chances getting back around that donkey.” So as we are speed walking into a jog past the donkey, a voice yells “Hey, come back, it’s ok.” We stop and look at each other and say, “we dont even want to do this anymore.” So the man who worked at the stable told us to come back the dogs dont bite. I’m thinking, now you mean to tell me I have to walk past this donkey again? It was already hard for me to do the first 2 times, now a third time! I was certain the donkey was going to be irritated and buck at us. Low and behold, we slowly start to walk past the donkey for the 3rd time and walk towards the man. At this time, my friend and I are dying of laughter at the ordeal we just encountered. The man does not seem amused by us but we didnt care, it was hilarious to us.

Now its time for the trainers to pick our horses for us and I ended up getting a beautiful white-ish horse named Gaston or something like that. My friend got the fiesty horse which they said likes to fight…LOL. So we get on our horses and everything is going smooth. I’m doing my best to not let my horse know that I am nervous since I the can sense fear. So we are walking along the trail and chatting it up with the horse trainers. As we approach the spot to change into our swim clothes, my trainer quickly gets off his horse to stand near me. All of a sudden my horse drops low and is gettting ready to roll in the sand with me on its back. The trainer stopped the horse and let me off. He said he knew my horse was going to do that because he loves sand baths. Seee, another near death experience, that bamma was about to throw me off just to roll around in the sand. Again, after getting myself together all we could do was laugh. My friend was laughnig hysterically through the whole thing, she said the look on my face when I went down before the trainer saved me was priceless…LOL.

Finally, the big shabang, what I had been waiting for, the swim with the horses! We start heading into the water with my horse and my trainers horse in the lead. All of a sudden I hear screaming, I turn around and there are big turds of poop from all the horses just spewing out. Luckily for me, I was in the front dodging all of the poop. The screams came from my friend for she was the unlucky one behind us. We are now getting deeper and deeper. My trainer told me to let go of the horse and just grab his tail. I’m like “oh this is no time for tricks” but I did it anyways. I ended up swallowing a bunch of salt water and was ready to get back on the horse. I make it back on the horse when my friend was like “can we turn around?” They told us yes. I was so happy, I was ready to get back on land. Again, my trainer and his horse along with me and my horse are leading the way back to the beach. I turn around to see complete chaos. My friend had fallen off her horse and couldn’t get back on. Her trainer had to let his horse go to attempt to get her back on her horse as she was struggling. When we made it to the beach we cracked up laughing. Clearly, we are goofy and cant help but to laugh at our misfortunes. We decided it was a nice experience and we are happy to say we tried it but that is not something I think i need to try again.

Have you ever had a funny experience while horseback riding or have you vowed to never do something and you still did it? If so, share your experience.

Happiness is a Journey, Come Wander with me!