New Routines in Ecuador
/I'll reverse the order of the posting and photos from the previous posts. I will now post latest on the top.
Video of the horses at Cayambe.
A video of the horses currently at the ranch in Cayambe.
This shows the incline of the hill side where the horses live, eat, graze over 2-3 days depending on location, vegetation etc. The inclines are severe and numerous times Luca has slipped an fallen on horse sh*. No problem, since every other step is either horse, cow or dog sh*. That's why we have boots. Plenty of bacteria is entering out systems to keep the "balance" in our biomes!
This morning was very nice and Cayambe Volcano came out of hiding. You can mostly catch it in the distance in pics 3+, but the phone camera is not good with distances and clarity. When it appears, however, it's spectacular. This view is from 3,100m, Cayambe Summit is ~5,700 and the staging area (the Refugio, see below for those pics) is 4,200m and 25km from this location.
Pictures of the horses, brown is Oliver and the poor guy is last on totem pole. The white on, Valderoso, is the alpha male of this small group. There's a larger, brindle, "entero" male who dominates Valderoso. Valderoso barely lets me pet him at this time, never-mind capturing and forget about riding him. For now. He does respond to my "alpha" presence when I crack the "soga" (rope), however, he does it in a passive aggressive way. Horses as pack animal move away from pressure and the teaching approach is "pressure and release". The idea is they react to pressure and you are to give them "favorable feedback" with the release, if they do what you have asked. Val moves when I give him pressure. However, he purposely, and does this every time, moves and stops when he has given me his rear end to see. Not so good from a training perspective, as his behind is also where he can generate the greatest kick, while he flees, telling me "who's the boss now"? Very high school.
I arrived one morning and saw these two poor bastards. They live next door and were getting ready for the day of hoeing. The iron hoe is itself at least 100lbs, I tried and failed to move it. Well for $40 they'll work the whole day on the 45 degree hill--demonstrating amazing dexterity and strength.
LINK TO MOVESCOUNT--pending
I finally got the truck Caminonetta an oil change, a good cleaning (including engine) and some minor detailing done on the morning of Tues, Oct. 18. Then, I promptly drove it to Cayambe, checked on and moved the horses to the new pasture, got them clean water, managed to pet Val and headed off to the Refugio of Cayambe.
Base camp shelter for those who want to summit Cayambe's 5,700m. On the way, we picked up some passengers (local village kids heading up the mountain), 2 different groups caught rides. They smudged the rear windows, railing, baseboards, rear side panels, wheels even (?) with their DIRTY GRUMPY LITTLE HANDS. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Two different groups with two different ways of saying goodbye: one said "Que Dios de Bendiga". May God Bless You. The 2nd, "Que Dios te Page". May God Pay You.
I stopped on the way to the Refugio to mark location and take pictures of the mountain peak as it sneaked through the clouds. Plus, that truck sure looks good...even at 3,836m. However, that 24c is completely off (from inside the truck) and it was closer to 8-9c and windy outside. The road has many really Pakistani bad parts, but I never needed 4WD, and powered through on just rear wheels. Perhaps it was the just completed oil and filter change, but power came easy and was exceedingly smooth. I expected more push back as the air shortage would make it suffer, but that was not the case, at least not to 4k meters.
The cow sequence. Why is livestock here? In the National Park Cayambe, at almost 4,000m, by themselves, eating the native and delicate paramo high Andean grass?! And, get out of my way...
The refugio is another 500m north on the road, but this was a perfect place to stop, mostly because there was a turn-off, it was flat and I had to pee. 4,018m. Also, storms clouds were building and I wanted to get back to Cayambe for something to eat before I hit to R35 and the 1.25hr drive back to Miravalles. This person kept getting in my way as I tried to take pictures of the Caminonetta...