Victor, having loaded the mule now prepares the horse

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Octavio riding (and winning) on El Flaco in a local rodeo. El Flaco now lives with us.

Like Rigo, his cousin, he is a champion of local rodeos and a popular sight riding with his son Cristobal, and sometimes even with Felipe, aged 8. Children begin to ride in rodeos quite young – 11 or 12 years old – but 8 is exceptional.

The method is unusual. Lacking fishing lines and all the expensive equipment, they do what the local country people do: make it from what they can find. The fishing rod  was a used beer can,  with s string line wound around it and a hook and a piece of bread on the end. With this they caught 4 trout for supper. The other way is ‘tickling’ for trout and catching them in your hands.

Tickling for trout, fishing in El Toyo

In the evening they took our clients, including an 11 year old boy, up the steep hill, carrying bits of wire which they used to trap rabbits. Result: rabbit stew for lunch the next day. This kind of activity would not suit vegetarians, but for the rest of the world, if you can get over the city dweller’s reaction, that maybe it is cruel to fish and trap animals rather than buy them off the supermarket shelf, then you can enjoy this real country experience.

Needs fotos of fishing line and rabbit wires

Rigo dressed for the part riding in England

Then we put up a website and things began to move a bit faster. Now we have people from all over the world, the majority for day trips from Santiago, but some for longer camping expeditions going out both from El Toyo, near Santiago, and from Bano Morales where he was raised along with his cousin, Octavio Nunez. As quite small boys they looked after goats on the mountain, and went riding on ‘chukaro’ or untrained horses, secretly at night in the mountains.

Rigo and his son Angelo winning the rodeo & leading the victory parade behind the 'capataz; in El Toyo

Rigo’s chief passion is rodeo riding. Rodeos in Chile are a test of skill herding and managing a steer in a particular highly skilled way. When younger Rigo was always a champion in the amansadura or bucking bronco competitions, held for fun after the main event.  He loves the mountains and feels most at ease there, enjoys his work with tourists and takes a pride in showing then the best of his country and his beloved ‘cordillera’.

Horses waiting eagerly for a feed of hay after a long ride

Our main ‘crop’ is horses, although we also try to grow grass to feed them, but never enough, and walnut trees. These are produced in this area and we have 70 young trees, hoping that in a year or two we will get some income from them, to help pay for all the extra hay that we have to buy for our growing number of horses. Growing, because we can’t resist buying another occasionally and also because the mares have foals and increase our stock.

In spring and autumn the birds come down from the cordillera and are a feast to the eyes. We also have several queltehues – a sort of lapwing – living on the parcela and bringing up their babies. The word queltehue is thoguht to sound like therir screaming cry, often heard in theis part of Chile. We have an occasional loica, with fat scarlet breast, a real red not the slightly orange colour of a robin, and altogether a bigger bird. In summer mirlos come and sit on the horses backs and eat the bugs off them.

Horses can see in the dark, so moonlight rides in the mountains are a possible adventure

We were recently asked to provide a horseback ride into the pre-cordillera of the Andes,close to Santiago, at night. It turned out to be full moon, although that was coincidental as it was a birthday party of a special kind. As it happened, it was a cloudy night and pretty dark. We had lights at the barbecue site but the guests had to ride up, and later down, in the dark.

The arrieros made a good fire and cooked the barbecue for the riders

The birthday girl with the arrieros after the feast in the mountains

Luckily horses can see at night, so there was no problem apart from a little nervous anxiety. Our head guide told me that horses can not only see, they have a powerful sense of smell and can follow another horse this way, ‘olfateando’.  Once on a 12 day ride where I was a client, not provider, the main ride got separated from the mule train which had all our warm clothes, food and camping equipment. We waited by a lake at about 3000 metres for the mules to arrive. Darkness fell and we began to despair. The journey that day had been steep and difficult even for our comparatively lightly- laden horses, but the mules were slowed down by their immense burdens.

Finally, in darkness, the arrieros with the mules came to a boggy area and it was now pitch dark. My arriero friend told me that the head guide that day made a potentially fatal error. He got off his horse. I asked why this was so terrible. My friend answered that once you get off you confuse the horse who expects you to lead him; therefore he doesn’t use his own instincts properly. I asked, ‘So what happened?’ He replied, ” I kicked my horse forward and he took the lead”; smelling where our horses had trodden in daylight, and took the correct path through the bog. They arrived, so all was well, at about 11 pm having climbed, laden, right up a mountain and then down, down through bog and darkness to the lake where we were waiting in the cold for them.

Arriero checks that all is well for his client before she sets off into the night

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Forking the hay into the baler ready for winter feed for the horses

It seems to be a basic characteristic of human nature, along with hunter-gathering and nest-making, to long for a little piece of land to cultivate. Here in Chile where the mountains rise up on either side and small flat patches of rich alluvial soil run down between the sides of the rocky ‘cajon’,  cultivable land has a special magic.  I had the opportunity to rent a small parcela with two colleagues, local arrieros, or horsemen. It was here that we first kept the horses which work in Horse Riding Chile holidays.

The four little fields, my colleagues decided, could be used to grow alfalfa. This is a grass that is so vigorous that you can expect to cut it about four or five times a year, and thus grow enough feed for the horses in winter.

The cascades of blackberry bushes, which made wonderful impenetrable hedges, had to be trimmed back and the ground ploughed. Apart from the ploughing everything was done by hand or horse. A horse was used to pull branches along, ruffling up the soil. Then a pole was attached and pulled along the ground at intervals to mark straight lines and sowing widths. Then oat seed was scattered by hand, walking up and down between the lines. Then brushwood, from the wild acacias that grow here, was pulled over the seeded soil to partially bury the seeds. Fortunately it then rained, this being still winter, and so the seeds began to germinate.

For the next month the time was spent clearing the defunct drainage system, so that when spring came water could flow. Then we waited for growth. When the oats, which we had planted as a strong protection for the young alfalfa, were about three inches high, the first watering took place. This is always the hardest as the channels have to be made and also the ground must not be too heavily flooded before the plants are strong enough to resist. Some plovers who lived on the land had laid their eggs on a nest in the middle of one of the fields. So a spade was fetched, the nest delicately lifted and earth packed underneath to raise it above water level. A week later 2 baby plovers appeared, from the four eggs.

The plover babies were the first offspring of the plot, and a week later appeared a little foal. Then, all in a rush because it was spring, came a baby goat. So the land burgeoned, not just with plants.

One of the tyrannies of the Chilean agricultural system is watering. If there isn’t money for mechanical watering it all has to be done by hand. The alfalfa must be watered every 8 days in summer, which lasts for 6 or 7 months with no rain. Then comes cutting and baling the hay for storage.

We managed to buy quite cheaply the basic machinery for harvesting, and this with a plough and a horse or mule, is self-sufficiency. The greatest joy, apart from the animals on the parcela, has been the machinery which after some initial problems has functioned well. It all dates from the fifties and is exceptionally picturesque, and also, although some of it is mechanised, it all requires a lot of labour and genuine horse power.

two horses needed to pull the grass cutter

First comes the grass cutter, pulled by two horses. Then the rake, pulled by one horse.

Old fashioned hay rake, pulled by a horse with driver on metal seat, for turning hay

Then, when the hay has been put into clumps by hand, the baler. This machine is the most fantastic of all. It is a design probably of the thirties, but made in the fifties of the last century. It needs two horses to pull it. We have to draw on all the local talent for repairs when needed, as they are all true obras de mano, or handiwork.

The baling machine for hay, used on our parcela