Stories from the Amazon - Journey Across the Lands

Every year in my hometown, right before the annual fair would be a big parade which usually started at the river where the train station was because there was a large grassy area with plenty of room for the trucks to congregate. The train station was also at the very start of the main road through downtown. 

This particular story involves my horse Foxy. She was a wonderful, hotheaded, bright, red, chestnut mare.  (all you horse people know what I'm saying!) I was probably around 17 or 18 at the time. Most of the horse people in our city knew who I was by that time and offered to haul my horse into town so I could ride in the parade that year. I loved riding in the parade, which was nothing like any parade you've seen here in the USA. It was mostly about 100 or more men and a small handful of their girlfriends who didn't really know how to ride, riding up main street. Most of the men were being showoffs and pretty much all of them had a beer in one hand the reins in another hand and sometimes they swapped the beer or the reins for a big bull whip which they would crack at random. Some of the horses would freak out with the whip cracking. Most of them were used to it by that time and didn't even notice. In the Amazon of course it is pretty much always hot. The parade would meet in the morning, maybe sometime around mid morning. There was never really a set time to start. Just when enough horses and riders and several big sound trucks playing loud Brazilian country music, called musica Sertaneja, and announcing the upcoming annual fair. I just loved this parade because I'd get to ride with other people, see lots of horses and ride in town. It was fun. And a long ride. It took the good part of about 2-3 hours to ride from the train station all the way up the main street and down a bunch of other streets to the outskirts of town where the fairgrounds were. Horses would be drenched in sweat. Riders would be quite a bit less enthusiastic than at the start. 

This year when we finally got to the fairgrounds of course all the truckers didn't want to haul the horse back 17 kilometers to the ranch for free and I didn't have money to pay a trucker so I decided I'd ride Foxy back to my home in town and put her in the back yard for overnight till I could figure out how to get her back to the ranch. In Brazil, most people have a house in town and a ranch out of town that they only visit but don't live at. This was the time before cell phones and there were no landline phones out at our farm  so we did what most people did and lived in town. Our back yard was huge and plenty big enough for the horse to stay a day or two. 

After several days of trying to get enough grass hauled over to her by bicycle or armload, I decided it was high time to get her back out to the ranch. I had always wanted to do some endurance riding so I thought it might be nice to give that a try and ride her the 17 km back out to the ranch. Some people were going to be driving out to picnic at our ranch later that day so I arranged with them to bring me back home at the end of the day. I figured I could ride out there in a few hours. 

The scariest part of that whole ride was the part in town, getting from our house to the exit of the highway. I always knew Brazilians drive pretty crazy, but you never see crazy driving up close until you're riding a horse down the side of a very busy road with not much sidewalk to squeeze up on. But we made it to the highway finally and I decided to ride as far to the side of it as possible and thankfully there was plenty of room alongside the highway that it was a pretty relaxing and peaceful ride for the most part. Until we got to a section where it was a hill and they had cut the highway a little through the hill so I took the high part on the side, not seeing that they had cut the jungle down in that stretch. If you've never tried to walk through cut jungle I definitely recommend you never trying it on horseback! Poor Foxy. I felt so bad that I put her in that situation. She had to lift her legs up very high over logs and branches. I was off of her by now and trying to untangle vines and thorns from her. By the time I realized the predicament we were in, we were already halfway through and it would have been worse to try and turn around. I tried to see if there was a way down the cliff next to the highway but alas it was much too steep, a shear cliff at least 3 horses high. So we slowly made our way, very slowly, picking through the cut down trees and vines. Till finally we made it to the end and the cliff was only about one horse high and not quite so steep so with heart beating we slipped and slid down it and off the torturous cut jungle. Thankfully there was a creek at the bottom of the hill and we went and stood in it for a good long time to cool off, rinse the sweat off the poor horse and soothe her feet and legs before finishing our ride. 

We finally made it back to the ranch about 5 or so hours after we left the house. The friends who were going to bring me back home had long since left the ranch. I think I ended up catching the bus home or maybe hitching a ride with whoever stopped. It was quite the adventure and looking back I can't believe my parents let me do that! That was a good horse though, spunk and all. One of the best I've ever owned. She would do pretty much anything for me.