montando a caballo por la sierra norte

foto by Leigh Needleman, from along the paseo / caminata

We had decided we would do one of the caminatas in between villages in the Sierra Norte. Elisa at the officina de Expediciones Sierra Norte* mentioned that the kids could ride horses instead of walking. Knowing my child and her a) love of riding horses and b) lack of love for long hikes, we were all in! Turns out there was an extra horse so I took that one...which my inner thighs and sitz bones are only starting to forgive me for ... its been a long time since I was in a saddle for three hours and never in a wooden one! Anyway, I probably had it a lot easier than either the horses or the other adults who had to walk with very few, short breaks up and down glorious mountains from Benito Juárez to Cuajimoloyas!
















Here then, are the fotos of us riding the horses!

Again, some of these fotos are courtesy of the Needlefrishes, Leigh and Andrew. Gracias, chicos!!! And so many thanks to our guias while we were on our caminata / paseo a caballo who got us where we needed to go and took care of the kiddos and me when our horses wanted to gallop down the hills....eeeeeeeeee!!!

our caballos show up at Benito Juárez

Thalía muy feliz en su caballo, quien se llama Pon Villa (possibly just Pancho Villa but the Sierra Norte accent is a bit hard for me to understand), Thalia le dio el apodo de Coco por el chocolate

I did some taking of fotos over my shoulder...ja!

Sometimes the path looked like this-- a dirt road ("la carretera"), wide and even and fit for trucks, horses, motobikes, and humans a pie

And sometimes it looked like this-- escarpado! Shockingly, I did not take any fotos going DOWN...too busy keeping my horse from running and holding my seat and more or less keeping my hat on....

Photo de Leigh Needleman. Sometimes the ride looked like this, along an open hillside with farmed terrrenos to one side and the bosque de pino-encino to the other...

Another foto de Leigh, of all of us riders and Eva, our guía...and Eric's elbow

Foto by Frishy, I believe, from when the horses & riders took a break while waiting for Leigh and Eric to catch up. What a view!!!!!! Que padre, no?????

Photo by Leigh or me and Adriana, my caballo, at the end of our paseo, in Cuajimoloyas. Adriana was a fiesty horse who had a mind of her own. After I realized this, I paid a little more attention to my riding and commands and we got along just grand. I even learned that she quite enjoyed having me rub her forelock when we took breaks. Note that neither my horse nor Thalia's had bits (therefore there was a good bit of the time that Thalia's horse was led by our guide).

Coco and Thalía at the end of the ride, in Cuajimoloyas

*Expediciones Sierra Norte is the pueblos-owned ecotourism company that all visitors to these pueblos must deal with in one way or another, whether you have a guide or just take a hike or go on a zipline. The Pueblos Mancomunados de Oaxaca own and operate this organization. Community members must volunteer their time working for a year at a time (during which they are paid a daily stipend). There are other communal aspects of the pueblos as well-- in Benito Juárez for example, four people (equally distributed among genders) are yearly chosen to lead the pueblo in terms of making decisions for infrastructure, policies, etc. and four women are chosen to make and provide the food for the children in primary and telesecundaria schools of the pueblo. The pueblos of the Sierra Juárez (part of the Sierra Norte) in the 90s began to specialize in the production of flowers for the mercados of Oaxaca (Tlacolula, Abastos, others in Oaxaca de Juárez, etc.) as well as in ecotourism - hikes, mountain biking, ziplines, eco-cabins, etc. in an effort to provide jobs that don't mean having to leave (Oaxaca has very, very high internal emigration and well as very high emigration to the EEUU) the pueblo.