Our last day in Torres del Paine was going to be a boat ride and shorter, 6 mile hike to the French Valley; then we looked into the hike and realized it was 6 miles one way and a steep climb. Given how tired and sore we still were from Base Torres, we decided we probably weren’t at our peak hiking shape and opted for a lower key day, swapping the plan to horseback riding in the afternoon. Tori hadn’t ridden since she was a kid and I’d never ridden before.
We relaxed a bit in the morning and took a short, drizzly stroll around Rio Serrano, where we met some of the local ranch dogs and horses wandering around. It was cute until one of the foals decided that my green rain coat looked edible and aggressively tried to take some bites out of me.
After lunch and getting some laundry done we headed to the stables. There was one other rider, much more experienced, who would be joining us. After a brief introduction to the guides we were given a 30 second “how to horse” lesson and were on our way. My horse, Mate (named after the tea), started out without any prodding but very quickly decided he was tired and didn’t want to go for a walk. I assumed it was user error until the gauchos came back, coached my kicking and prodding technique, and eventually resorted to prodding him along with their horses. There were a few starts and stops like this, but eventually Mate made peace with the fact that he had a job to do and we settled into a rhythm (and a few unexpected trots to catch up) as we crossed the flat grassland of the flood plain and got into the woods.
The trail in the woods was tight, steep, and rocky as we started climbing closer to the mountains, sticking close to a smaller branch of the Rio Serrano. The stream started off amazingly clear until we started getting closer to the river, where it became the same opaque, milky glacial blue typical of the waters in Patagonia. We crossed over the stream several times with water coming up over our boots. It was obvious the horses knew the path well and we were mostly just along for the ride, which was perfectly fine for me.
The only scary moment I had was at our turnaround point when the rain and wind finally caught up with us. I took my rain jacket off so I could re-adjust my camera and shoulder bag to be protected, and the wind caught my jacket while I was putting it back on. The flapping startled Mate, but luckily the guides were nearby and reacted quickly to calm him and help me get re-adjusted. The risk was obvious in retrospect, but wasn’t something that had even crossed my mind as a danger.
We made good time on the way back, returning to the stables about 4.5 hours after we set off and I felt pretty good about my first experience with horseback riding — I certainly didn’t expect the trail to be as technical as it was or the river crossings to be as deep as they were. I also didn’t expect quite the level of soreness after, so our plan to let our muscles relax and have a recovery day didn’t quite work out in retrospect.
