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

Horse riding in the Andes

The cordillera around Santiago is in many ways more beautiful in winter than even in summer. Instead of  flowers we have snow on the surrounding heights, sometimes coming  as low as were we ride, although it is more often in the distance. The sun usually shines and the middle of the day is almost hot, however cold the nights.

Guarantee: There are some bad days but the weather forecast is usually clear for several days and we know when it is gong to snow. If you have made an advance booking and paid a deposit we will refund everything if the cause is bad weather or we can postpone the ride if you have flexible dates..

A lucky snap - condor (vultur gryphus) in the Andes

A rare opportunity taken as Lauren snaps this beautiful Chilean Condor (Andean Condor, Vultur gryphus) from her horse, who stand quiet for her moment of photography on a ride in the Cajon del Maipo, towards the Embalse de Yeso near Santiago

Octavio with son Cristobal in a rodeo

In Chile the occupation of arriero, or huaso, is disappearing, especially from the central zone, and the Cajon del Maipo in particular. The arrival of refrigerated lorries makes it unnecessary to drive cattle over the mountains from Argentina and the shrivelling of agriculture and the replacement of horses with agricultural machinery for the little that remains, means that although horses are still used and highly valued in this area, there are fewer of them and many are kept for sporting purposes, or for tourist activities.

That said, the ancient sport of rodeo, corriendo, is alive and strong. There are at least five media lunas in the Cajon, not including Pirque, and rodeos are well attended. It is here that the huasos exhibit their skills, and also their clothes which are traditionally a sombrero, manta, a short jacket, pin striped trousers (as worn by lawyers in England) , chaps, boots and spurs, and a lasso on the saddle. Many huasos are tremendous dandys, and this is their moment.

Octavio's son Cristobal, also on La Fianza at a rodeo

It is not a dying sport. I have been struck by the number of young riders entering the media luna, and often doing well. Also, unlike England where every child desires a football uniform, here the little boys delight in dressing up as miniature huasos, down to chaps and spurs. What is more, their parents are happy to expend good money dressing them like that for special occasions. And at the end of the day you see three and four year olds dancing the cueca with the best of them.

Young boy riding in a Chilean rodeo

I have been to many rodeos in the cajon and on one occasion went to the championship in Rancagua. Gradually I have been able to unravel the mystic art of corriendo, and I think I understand it. I know that many Chileans do not. What sometimes looks at first like two men on horses charging around after an animal in a somewhat disorganised way becomes much more interesting when one understands what they are trying to do, and what the scoring system entails. Also of course if one has a horse or a friend running.

The two riders have to work as a very close pair, and work better still if the two horses know each other. They have to wait at the gate for a steer to be released. Then they chase it round the smaller enclosure 3 times, to hot it up, and exit at the gallop. One point for a good fast entrance into the media luna. One rider then has to chase the animal and the other tries to keep it in against the wall, so that when they arrive at the padded bit they are in a position to turn it. This is done by the other rider, who has been galloping his horse sideways and at the correct moment, attacks, to pin the animal against the wall and induce it to turn. If this is done without touching, or by using the head of the animal, the score is zero points. Neck brings 1 point, shoulders 2, stomach area 3 and hindquarters four points, because this is the most difficult. If the animal is not turned and races on there is a negative 2 bad points. This has to be done 3 times. There are other ways of earning bad points, such as tijera (scissors) when the steer doubles back between the two riders, but these are the basic.

In official rodeos like those at Rancagua the riders are like race jockeys. They do it as a profession and in between rodeos simply practise. And the animals (steers) are fat and heavy and relatively slow moving. It is easier to follow what is happening. But in the cajon the riders are working men, doing it for sport at the weekend. And the animals come down from the mountain skinny and light and have been described as ‘lievres’ – hares – in comparison with the official ones. This inevitably means that there are plenty of puntos malos – minus points – as the animals often escape the grip of the riders and race around the ring.

The oldest media luna in the Santiago area, in the Cajon del Maipo is El Toyo. It was built in colonial times, pre-independence (that is early nineteenth century) when the land belonged to the Subercaseaux family, ancestors of the current dueno, Pedro Guillon. It is modelled on the Spanish equivalent and is, uniquely, built of stone, originally lined with mud. It fell into disuse at some point and was revived about 30 years ago, but the mud lining was not replaced. This meant that if a rider fell against the wall he hit the stone with possible disastrous consequences. Also when the steers tried to climb out of the ring to escape the pursuit, they sometimes succeeded. Not only did they cause havoc in the crowd, but often caused stones to fall into the media luna. This made it dangerous and there were huasos who refused to ride there.

The club de huasos of El Toyo, with the assistance and support of Pedro Guillon, have recently re-furbished the media luna. It has been lined most beautifully with wood, painted in the tricolor, and great efforts have been made to clear the sand of any remaining stones.

On the first day of the May Day weekend in 2007 the new media luna was launched to a great fanfare, followed by a rodeo on the Sunday and Monday 1^st May. The celebrations marked the great effort which the club de huasos have made and was graced by the Mayor and dignitaries of San Jose. At a party afterwards Las Brujas (a women”s group from the 70s) sang and on Saturday people danced all night, as usual. What I like about festivities after a rodeo is that the floor is so crammed with cueca dancers that there is hardly room to join them. In the country at least, the cueca survives, as does the rodeo and media luna. Long may it last.

Video of some of our guides competing in a local rodeo:

A day out at the Rodeo

Rodeos in Chile are even more popular as a sport than football. It is a sport that has its origins in more than 400 years of working cattle in a manner that is unique to Chile. Everyone in the crowd has an opinion on how to win and much advice is offered to the competitors from the stands, where a good deal of alchohol is also consumed.

The first requisite for winning is to have a good partner and  a good horse each; riders who work together and horses who do the same. Both the riders and the horses have to know how to ‘attack’, as that is how you turn the steer and earn good points. Many good riders lack the personality or temperament to attack well, and a horse has to to have the temperament and be trained to do so as well.

Horses receive their rosettes at a local rodeo

Women compete equally with men in local rodeos

The horse also has to be trained to gallop sideways. I was once put on a horse who knew what to do, and told to practise.  You have to turn the horse’s head away from the direction in which it is going and get it to lead with its shoulder. If moving to the right you would then squeeze with the left leg and put the right leg forward as a guide to the horse. It was so contrary to any riding intuition that I took a long time to learn. I have never ridden in a rodeo but in the Cajon del Maipo there are several good women rodeo riders.

The reason that horses have to be able to gallop sideways is that, in demonstrating their skill in control of a single cow, or steer, the work is divided as follows: one partner ‘arrea’s the animal, pushing it from behind and yodelling if necessary. The other partner has to pin the animal into the side of the media luna or arena, as otherwise it is impossible to control it well. To do this the horse has to gallop alongside facing the side of the arena at right angles and pressing the steer against the wall with its chest. When they arrive at the padded part the arriero stops pushing so that the animal may slow down for the partner to jam it into the side of the wall, padded to avoid hurt, in a way which causes the animal to turn round and go back in the other direction. This is done 3 times.

preparing to 'pin' and turn in a rodeo

If the animal turns of its own accord, or merely with a touch to its head the pair get zero points. The positive points are scored by seeing how much of the steer’s body is freely visible when the ‘pin’ takes place, result of the horse attacking and pinning it against the side. If a pin leaves the neck free, it’s a two-point pin. If the pin leaves the shoulder blade free, it’s a three-point pin. If a pin leaves the entire rib cage free, it’s a maximum four-point pin. If the riders fail to turn the animal and it passes the red line at the end of the padded zone, they accumulate minus points.

There are 3 turns altogether, with therefore a maximum of 12 good points and 1 extra usually for coming fast and clean out of the holding pen. That is a maximum of 13 points. You might see this occasionally in an official championship but in the local campesino events almost any positive points are good. If the steer passes the red line of the padded bit, or doubles back between the riders in what is called tijeras or scissors, there are minus points to be accumulated. Other more obscure details can also gain minus points and so often zero points seems quite a good score, while minus 5 is not uncommon.

On top of that while probably not technically corrupt, the judges seem often to have their favourites, who get 3 good points for a 2 point move, who are not penalised for tijeras and so on, so it can be tough going for the less privileged riders riding away from the home ground. Rich and poor alike compete in the local events, although it is not a really poor man’s sport because horses of sufficient quality are expensive to buy, train and maintain.

For more information see also this article on rodeos in Chile

The story goes that the Incas came as far south as Santiago and had a holy place high up on the mountain El Plomo. One day an arriero working on the mountain had a dream about a boy who was buried on the mountain. The dream told him the eact location and so he went the next day and dug into the snow. He went with his nephew and they found a mummified child in the place described.

El Plomo, near Santiago, where the Inca boy was found in 1954

The arrieros took the child down to a cave at about 4000 metres and hid it there for a month and 9 days while they negotiated the sale with the Museum of Natural History. When first excavated the body weighed around 35 kilos, according to the arriero, but after the time  in the cave it weighed only 15 kg. While they were carrying the body down the child began to leak oil and blood from his ears. This may show that he was still alive after 500 years, though frozen.
The head of Anthropology at the museum said that the child had been drugged with coca before being buried and had suffered no pain.

Discovered in 1954, it was the first frozen mummy discovery of high-altitude human sacrifice by the Incas.The Incas had discovered that 5000 metres above sea level is the perfect altitude as at this height a body freezes rather than decomposes and also does not suffer the deterioration that a higher altitude causes. There is a theory, therefore, that the child, of approximately 8 years of age, was not dead but was in a state of hibernation. Some say the child was ‘assassinated’ because it was removed from its bed of ice without the proper precautions. In fact perhaps it should not be called a mummy at all, but a frozen boy. He had not been embalmed; he had all his organs intact in his body and the outward appearance was of a normal child. He had feet, face and mouth, eyes with lashes, forehead, nose and head with hair arranged in complicated plaits. He was lying on his legs with his hands supported on his knees, in an attitude of prayer.

The mummy is curated by the National Museum of Natural History in Santiago, Chile and it has a replica of the mummy on public display.

Riding up to the cross at El Avion commemorating the LAN flight crash in 1965

A LAN Chile flight crashed in the Cajon Lo Valdes, otherwise known locally as ‘El Avion’ in 1965. In the air disaster database it is recorded as ‘The aircraft crashed into terrain after the crew failed to follow the prescribed departure route after takeoff’.  The story locally goes that the normal routine was three circles of flight to rise up above the mountains surrounding Santiago. The pilot bet he could do it in 2, and hit the mountainside just 50 metres below the top. It is said that the passengers were all bus and taxi owners going to a football match.

Wikipedia says: On February 6, 1965 a Douglas DC-6, operating as LAN Chile Flight 107 from Santiago to Ezeiza, Argentina at an altitude of about 12,000 ft (3,658 m), flew into a mountain near the San José Volcano in the Las Melosas area of the Andes. All of the 87 passengers and crew on board died in what is as of 2010 the worst aircraft accident in Chile

The ride up on horseback is incredibly beautiful, and we were struck that this pathetic tin cross, put there by the families of the dead, is the only memorial of the crash, other than the glinting flashes from glass still lodged in the high rocks around. Lan does not seem to feel it necessary to commemorate them.

Mule being loaded with mountaineers' baggage to take u pto base camp

Mountaineering service to deliver equipment and baggage to base camps

The mountains around where we ride are some of the best climbing mountains in the world and attract many climbers, or Andinisats as they are called. Some come also to practise before a major climb like Everest.

Mountaineers need some way of taking their baggage and equipment upto base camp. We can provide arrieros of the area – men who know how to handle mules and pack them tight. Our colleagues are extremely reliable. The mountaineering service has fallen into disrepute on occasion when poor service has been received in the past. Our associates provide a good service at a reasonable price.

For more information and quotes, contact us at ridingsantiago@gmail.com, or directly by telephone to Octavio Nunez on (569)96491537. As there is a signal in only a few locations up there you may have to try more than once to make contact. He can also be contacted at his house in San Jose de Maipo, where connections are better.

He take mules to:

Volcan San Jose:
Refugio Plantat
Las Lajas
Cerro Marmalejo:
Aguas Clara
Fin del Valle

Onlywhen weather and snow  conditions permit. The higher the altitude, the less weight the mules can carry – on average 60 kg per mule.
All Reservations in advance.