Day 14- November 16th

Woke up early-ish as we were going horse trekking this morning, and were meeting the guides at 8. There was supposed to be a group going white water rafting aswell, but this was cancelled due to torrential rain last night- legally, they can raft when the river is at 50mph, however this morning it was 150mph.
6 horse riders were picked up by a little old man in his bus and driven up the the ranch where the horses were kept. River Valley offers a unique horse riding experience. They don't use shoes or bits on the horses, nor do they use traditional reigns. The emphasis is on building a relationship with the horse. It is an independent creature with its own thoughts, and you can't expect it to respond like a robot to your every pull and kick.

It was honestly just a beautiful experience.
We were assigned to our horses according to personality apparently, and then we began some bonding exercises before riding them. We also had to make sure that the horse maintained a certain distance from us, to ensure a level of respect between us. My horse was a wild horse called Tuki, who had been tamed two years ago, and was a gorgeous brown colour, but not too silky and smooth like though thorough-bred horses.
Even though it was raining, I really enjoyed the trek. It made me think of horse riding a different way. You don't need to micromanage the horses movements- we were moving over some pretty difficult, steep and slippy terrain and the horse knows better than you do which is the easiest path to take. However, you need to make sure that you are there to guide the horse, so that you are not simply a passenger.

We returned to River Valley for lunch and then set of on the long bus drive to Wellington. It took forever, and there were strong winds blowing which caused more delays to our journey.
We stopped over in a town called Bulls which was a bit bull crazy. Everywhere you looked there were signs with the bull theme; 'response-a-BULL' for the recycling bins, 'read-a-BULL' for the library, 'const-a-BULL' for the police station. I don't think they took themselves very seriously...

We arrived in Wellington quite late, but I already got the feeling I was going to like this city. Everywhere you looked there was something interesting. The architecture was way more beautiful than Auckland, and it was much more cultural- I saw theatres, museums and posters advertising free shows. We began making plans for the next day....