Author(s): Tania Krupitza

Travel Writing

How to find and lose a horse in Ecuador Seduced by grandiose visions of explorers of old, Tania Krupitza and two friends decided to buy horses and ride them through Ecuador. Despite a queue of charming Ecuadorian gentlemen eager to help, they ended up with one horse that looked like a mule, one that liked to go backwards instead of forwards and one that turned out to be Houdini reincarnated. Determined to prove that girls can do anything, they declined offers of machetes and bodyguards and set off. They slogged through rivers of mud and soaked in steaming hot pools in lost Indian villages. They saw sunrise over snow-capped volcanoes and galloped their horses across vast plains at 4000 metres above sea level. They met lonesome cowboys, Colombian hippies and ferocious patriarchs. They discovered how difficult it is to find horses in Ecuador and how easy it is to lose them.