Horsing Around

A true Dominican cowboy experience. On Sunday, some hospital contacts invited us out to the country for a holiday celebrating San Juan, some community's patron saint. We had no idea what the experience would involve when we arrived. We were only told that we'd go horseback riding to celebrate some saint, but really it was quite the affair. 


Thousands and thousands of people from regional horse associations rode on horseback all day from one town to another, pretty much taking over the entire roadway through the beautiful Cibao countryside. After sharing a bottle of rum and a bottle of coke at the colmado across the street, we piled nearly ten people into an SUV to find the horses. We hadn't finished are drinks, but that was evidently not a problem. The drinks came into the car with us, and they continued to be refilled as needed. Lesson learned: open container laws aren't really a concern here. 


We caught up with the horse parade, and followed in the car for a while. We were questioning whether or not "horseback riding" implied actually riding horses or just watching them from the car, but eventually we parked, got out of the car and were soon hopping onto horses with random Dominicans. People were carrying bottles of rum in their side saddles and downing it like it was water. 


Around 6pm, we all arrived at the colmado where we had started earlier that day and a ton of people were gathered to celebrate. At this point, they let us each get on our own horse, which was so exciting. And we went cantering down a beautiful country road during magic hour. It was beautiful.