Prance Stance

All right, I know I am a bit obsessed at times with disliking horses but really it’s the only logical reaction to those round assed nature cars. I just returned from a vacation, well honeymoon technically but that’s a dumb word, and it was to an island of horses. I’ve been there before but the horse issue does not lessen with exposure. At any rate, it’s a kick ass island and I will probably post multiple posts about happenings there, because of course I wouldn’t have just a normal vacation with no stories of note.

So Isla Vieques, for those of you who are into islands, kicks ass. It is very not commercialized, which means that the beaches are unspoiled and quite breathtaking. I mean, the island was occupied by the Navy for many years for bombing practice and shore assaults but that just adds to the charm for me. You have to beware of unexploded ordnance which provides a certain element of excitement, plus it would be cool to see any ordnance at all, exploded or otherwise. The Navy was kind of a bunch of dicks to leave it there though. You should at the very least explode your ordnance before just leaving it lying around. Seems the polite thing to do, ordancefully speaking.

On to horses, then. So this island is full of wild horses, because the Spanish bastards who colonized it felt like they needed to bring their special horses across the ocean. These special horses are called Paso fino horses, which is Spanish for Giant Shitheads. The reason they are special is because they have this very prancy prance, like extra coconut sounds when they run. You can hear them coming a bit away and it’s pretty much the worst. I basically gagged every time I heard one coming. People sometimes just ride them around, like in the towns or on the streets or even just have them parked outside a store. So gross.

One night as we were getting ready to go on a tour of the BioBay (Yes!!!! Dinoflagellates!), the horses in the nearby park area got all pissy with each other. Everyone in the group just kept listening to the guide’s discussion of the events to come but I totally hid between Bill and the van because the horses were getting very worked up and kept running closer to us as they bit each other and made horse screams. The guide was all, don’t you like horses? And I was all, duh, they’re awful and probably going to kill us soon. I mean I didn’t say that I don’t think but Bill will have to be the fact guy here because I was just trying to survive so I don’t remember exactly. Clearly I was the only one in the group with evolutionary instincts.

In one of our hikes to remote beaches I found a total horse skeleton. I felt triumphant and posed with various bones, my favorite being horse vertebrae. I felt like I was winning the island by standing on their bones. NO PRANCY NOISES NOW, COCONUT FEET.

All in all it was a lot of equine ups and downs but I handled it with great aplomb. Some of the variants of aplomb for me include awkwardness and weirdness but still aplomb it is. At any rate those horses knew how I felt and I hope they realized they’re not all that.