Riding Horses

Bob spent yesterday working on the sound system in the motorhome so that we could play DVDs and use our iPods.  He's got it figured out, and it is good to go!

Meanwhile, I cooked much of the day, making a yummy (but spicy!) Mexican Chicken Soup for dinner.  I had found some chicken legs in the freezer, so I roasted them, took the meat off the bones, and used the bones and skin to make stock.  It took a few hours, including a trip to Walmart and the grocery store for a couple of key ingredients, but it was worth it.  I used this recipe here.

Last night I dreamt about riding horses, a lovely dream, and I recalled my last time riding in Iceland.  It was July of 2002, and Bob and I had spent five days in that beautiful country.  We had been on a whale watch, had stood on two tectonic plates (North America and Europe), had flown in a light plane to Lake Myvatin (an internationally renowned bird watching paradise) and had swum in the Blue Lagoon. We were leaving to fly home to the States the next day, and were walking around Reykjavik. The city has official tourist offices where you can sign up easily for tours, and one tour caught our eyes--ride Icelandic Horses.  We signed up on an impulse, as it was something I had always wanted to do.  Bob is such a good sport about things like that--I very much doubt that it was on a HIS bucket list as well.

So the next morning a car picked us up and we were taken to Laxnes Farms, where I was assigned a horse named "Sippi."  I had some trepidation, as I thought the woman called the horse "Zippy" and I explained that in English this would indicate a very fast horse.  She assured me that "Sippi" had no hidden meaning and it was just a name, so off we went!  Icelandic horses are more like ponies in size, and have a unique gait called a Tolt, which is like a very fast walk rather than a trot.  They also canter.  These horses are quite used to running safely over ground that is covered in softball-sized chunks of lava rock, without stumbling. Amazing.

Our guide, Kristina, led a group of three tourists: an Englishwoman, Bob, and me. Iceland doesn't really have mountains; instead it has a lot of rocky hills and where we were there were no trees.  It does, however, have loads of waterfalls, and Kristina took us to one on the Laxnes property.  It was so much fun racing across the Icelandic countryside on our little steeds!

A couple of hours later we were at the airport heading home.  Sore, but happy.