Rubicon Valley Horse Trek

Tuesday (24.11.) was a very special day for me and some other international students, as the school organized horse trekking for us. In the morning, we all met at the school and took one of our school mini buses which was driven by our equine studies teacher who joined us this day. We headed off West for about an hour, to a place called Springfield in the Canterbury Plains. 

When we arrived, our guide Chris talked about safety and how he wants us to ride his horses. People that wanted to take their phones with themselves like me got a little bag that we could put around our necks. After this he sorted out the horses for everyone. The horse that I got was the 13 year-old Samson and has been such a wonderful horse over the whole time! The name of our horse was also the name that we got called on this day because it was too hard to remember all of our names just for some hours, so we just got called by the name of the horse that we were riding. As soon as everyone got on their horse, we started to walk all behind each other in a line along the road, before we got into huge sheep paddocks where we could split up and had our own space. When we had a lot of space we were normally allowed to trot or canter but it was always up to us whether we wanted to do it or not. We were a group of 11 people (including our guide) but they normally don't take that many people at once.

Samson

Our horse trek took three hours. We cantered through huge paddocks, walked up and down hills, over rough  underground, through  small water streams and everything the stunning landscape had to offer. The horses were absolutely trustable, they new exactly what to do and weren't afraid of pretty much anything. After a wee while as we went further and further up the mountains, we reached an other huge sheep paddock. We couldn't see the end of it and what's behind it but when we reached the fence on the other end everybody got surprised with an absolutely breathtaking view over the Waimakariri River and the stunning mountains of the Southern Alps in the background.  That was definitely the highlight of our horse trek and I will never ever forget this unbelieveably beautiful scenery! That is how I always imagined New Zealand's landscape.

I put together a little video of our horse trek, so that you can see the beautiful landscape a wee bit better:

Huge sheep paddocks

Stunning view over the Waimakariri River

 Here are some pictures that my friend Nina took of me during our horse trek:

All in all it was a great adventure and I would always love to do it again. The scenery was breathtaking and what I also liked was that the saddles turned out to be very comfortable even over a long period of time. I would absolutely recommend it, even for those who don't have any experience with riding a horse as there is no riding experience needed.

For me, it was definitely one of the best activities I have done in New Zealand so far! Thanks to Chris that guided us very well through this trek as well as Rangiora High School, including our equine studies teacher and coordinators for offering us this amazing trip!

Annika