Four resources for horse-crazy travelers

by Katie Hammel on

I grew up riding horses, and though now that I live in a big city I don’t get to ride as often as I’d like, I still love the feeling of galloping on horseback to the rhythm of hoof beats. I’ve ridding with the gauchos in Argentina, through coffee fields in Honduras, over rolling green hills in Hawaii, and on the five-gaited four-legged teddy bear of an equine that is the Icelandic Horse. If you love horses and are looking to plan an equestrian vacation, here are four resources to get you started.

Equitours, “America’s largest and oldest horseback riding vacation company”, offers packaged tours for avid equestrians. With tours in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, America, and the South Pacific, they pretty much cover the globe by horseback. The site allows you to search by experience level, location, length of tour, and date. Trips range in cost from $800 to $2900 and include riding, accommodations, meals and transfers, but not flights.

Hidden Trails Equestrian Tours offers packaged vacations, but goes beyond the standard trail rides. In addition to vacation treks, they offer cattle and wild horse drives, riding clinics, covered wagon treks, riding safaris and pack trips in over 40 countries. Specialty trips include ride and cook, ride and fish, woman only, and gaited horse trips. Rates range from $600 to $3000 and include riding, accommodations, meals and transfers, but not flights.Equitrekking works with local riding companies to offer equestrian vacations throughout North and South America and Europe, with few options in South Africa, India and Nepal. In addition to offering links to the individual companies and their tours (which range in price, riding ability required and length) the site also offers advice and information on equestrian travel, travel tips, and clips from episodes of the Equitrekking TV show.

Nancy D. Brown, a travel writer and the lodging editor at Uptake.com, details horseback vacations around the world on her new blog, Writing Horseback. Detailing everything from full-service ranches and resorts to equestrian vacations and companies offering trail rides, her site covers destinations from California and Oregon to Antigua, Norway, and Hawaii. It’s not a fully comprehensive list of everything that’s out there (the site is quite new) but if you are open to suggestions for a destination, want to plan a trip to a resort that caters to riders, and prefer first-hand reviews, this website is a great resource.

Olympic Fever in Hong Kong?

by Josh Lew on

Though it has been officially part of China for 11 years now, Hong Kong’s athletes marched into the Games under their own flag. Beijing’s goodwill gesture of holding the equestrian events in Hong Kong was welcomed, but Olympic fever has seemed slightly muted in the former British colony.

Yes, Hong Kongers aren’t as excited about the Olympics and the success of team China as mainlanders are, but that doesn’t mean they are not following the Games closely. And, with no athletes expected to earn worldwide attention, Hong Kong has adopted some PRC stars as their own. Billboards featuring (now injured) Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang and hoops star Yao Ming are quite visible. Large screen TVs are broadcasting events in public spaces and crowds are stopping to watch.

But what does Hong Kong really think of Beijing’s coming out party? The mainland is already swallowing up Hong Kong’s once great film industry, and Mandarin is being heard in Kowloon and Central more and more every day. And now Beijing has grabbed the spotlight and captured the imagination of the world.

But Hong Kong has seemed to embrace the Games nonetheless.

They can start thinking about their future with Beijing after the Olympics have closed.