{"id":225,"date":"2014-10-13T11:30:16","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T17:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2019-07-11T22:34:38","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T04:34:38","slug":"horsing-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/horsing-around\/","title":{"rendered":"Horsing around"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hand-painted sign showing two bridled horses does not point\u00a0towards a fancy place. Turning\u00a0down this stone driveway off the\u00a0main road through Las Nubes will not deliver you to a\u00a0state-of-the-art equine training facility. Nor are these lush pastures described in any\u00a0Lonely Planet guidebooks. Yet, the animals grazing these hills speak volumes about the culture of Costa Rica’s Central Valley, where horses are not just\u00a0historical throwbacks but remain essential for work, getting around and\u00a0showing off in distinctly Tico style<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About 5 km from the school “Coronado a Caballo”\u00a0offers informal, very affordable “cabalgatas” ( trail rides), based out of a modest stable with 50 or so well-cared-for horses, frequented by Ticos much more\u00a0than foreign tourists. The Costa Rican saddle horses raised here are colloquially known as “criollos,”\u00a0descended from Spanish and Peruvian breeds. Some are trained to\u00a0make impressive, dance-like movements, with dramatic knees and dropped noses,\u00a0like someone who sees a spider in every\u00a0step. The trail horses are less flashy, with\u00a0smooth\u00a0sure-footed gaits even in rough terrain.<\/p>\n

The hills and farms east of our\u00a0Coronado campus certainly qualify. While only a short distance from\u00a0the most densely populated and urbanized cities in the country, much of the highlands are still\u00a0only accessibly by horse, motorbike or 4×4 vehicle. The road to Las Nubes\u00a0disintegrates into skeins of rock and mud about 10 km from the school as it passes near\u00a0the edge of Braulio Carrillo National Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Horseback riding provides\u00a0unique panoramic views of the Central Valley below, the Cordillera Central mountains and cloud forests above. Plus that sense of freedom and possibility that for whatever reason, only seems to come when you’re a meter off the ground on the back of a trusty horse.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The light and the land in Coronado, San Jose, Costa Rica.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0-Emily Jo Cureton<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hand-painted sign showing two bridled horses does not point\u00a0towards a fancy place. Turning\u00a0down this stone driveway off the\u00a0main road through Las Nubes will not deliver you to a\u00a0state-of-the-art equine training facility. Nor are these lush pastures described in any\u00a0Lonely Planet guidebooks. Yet, the animals grazing these hills speak volumes about the culture of Costa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,36,20,1],"tags":[3,137,11,5,4,98,74,136,29],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cool-places-to-go","category-culture","category-nature","category-uncategorized","tag-academiatica","tag-cabalgata","tag-coolplaces","tag-coronado","tag-costarica","tag-culture-2","tag-emily-jo-cureton","tag-horseback-riding","tag-sanjose"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Caballo2.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppNc8-3D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/1000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.academiatica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}