Tupiza - ride 'em cowboy!!!

After our submerged under water horse riding antics in The Pantanal, we decided that some more horse riding was in order, but this time in the dry and Bolivia was probably the best place to do it.

We were in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory (they did their last robbery and had their final stand just up the road) so it seemed rude not to get on a horse and explore the wild west countryside around us.

We hooked up with a very funny couple called Ben and Kate and met up with our unlikely named teenage guides (better than a paper round) Brian (?!) 16 and Xavier 14. We were a little concerned about their experience until Xavier explained that he'd been riding since he was three. This didn't stop me be being a little concerned following him into crossing raging muddy waters.

My horse was a new romantic and Nicky´s had a pimp limp.

Despite none of us having any real experience of note (apart from Kate being a Gymkhana veteran) we got stuck right into some pretty treacherous terrain, river crossing and frighteningly fast galloping up dirt tracks and dried up river beds.

Xavier in particular was found of asking, ´quieres mas rapido?´and then whipping the horses arses before he´d got much of a reply.

The craziest part of the day came when Nicky did some amazing stunt woman antics. Its a complicated story, but bare with me. We were walking along side a river, when we came across a pipe bridge (a water pipe about a foot in diameter hanging from some cables, like a suspension bridge but with a pipe not a road). The pipe meant we couldn't get past unless we went down the bank a bit to the river´s edge, which is what 1st Xavier and then Kate did, having to duck just a little to get under. My horse followed suit but didn't fancy getting his feet wet so stayed on the bank and I had to lean right forwards flat on the saddle to get under. Nic´s horse wasn't the sharpest tool in the box and I don't think it realised it had Nic on its back, so it didn't really go very far enough down the bank, meaning that the the pipe was approaching Nic at about her at chest height. This obviously alarmed Nic a little so she let out a little scream of, ´´oh my god, I'm not gonna get under it, I'm not gonna get under it!´´. I turned round to see Nic approaching the pipe, looking anxious, and thoughts rushed through my head; what if she hit it really hard and fell off, what if she got pushed off and her feet got stuck in the stirrups and she got dragged along by her dopey horse, what if she got off OK but got trampled by Ben and Brian´s horses? To our astonishment, Nic proceeded to do one of the coolest things Ive ever seen her do; she grabbed onto the pipe, let the horse walk on and then calmly dropped to the ground and stepped aside of the horses that were following all in one fluid graceful motion, coolness personified. After a brief silence we all burst into applause.

I´ll let the photos do the talking when it comes to the scenery we saw along the way

This railway track was the scene of the most adrenaline filled moment of my trip so far. With little real encouragement or warning mine and Kate´s horses accelerated up to a gallop faster than we had done so far all day, and then after a little while it was like they changed gear and suddenly started to fly along at a speed that was truly insane given that we had no helmets on. We named it the Ubergallop (sorry to any Germans reading, i cant find the umlow key on this keyboard).

This is us at lunch. We weren't looking quite so pleased with ourselves at the end of 8 hours in the saddle.