hey is for horses, i'll feed you later!

[i know, i know, i'm a natural.]

wednesday morning of our week long vacation, we woke up early and went on a horseback ride to the playa madama. the lady that owned our hostel has lots of horses, so we set up a half-day excursion with her. i've ridden horses a handful of times, but it's still always something to get used to. actually, it's always kinda hilarious to me because you're riding on this thing that just walks around and eats and poops when it wants. i probably was laughing a majority of the time because it feels so silly! i don't know, i'm weird. 

anyyyways, we rode the horses down to the beach (my horse and kaylee's horse literally stopped to eat every two seconds, no matter how many times we pulled back. we kept yelling "no comida! no almuerzo!" which means something like "no food! no lunch!" haha) and hung out for awhile.

 [playa madama. doesn't look super clean up front, but the water's gorgeous once you get out a little further in.]

her horse helpers even climbed up the coconut tree and knocked a ton of green coconuts down for us to drink the coconut water. super cool to watch! although i feel like a brat because i really don't like coconut water at all. in my opinion, it tastes like baby throw up......or what i imagine baby throw up to taste like haha. i still drank it because i didn't want to be rude/i wanted to feel authentic [of course], but i didn't like it. they cut it open and let us eat the coconut meat. and then they cut open the dried out ones on the ground [the brown kind we see at the grocery store] and let us eat the dried coconut. i personally prefer that more than the coconut meat because the coconut meat is kind of rubbery. i feel like i'm eating egg yolks or something! and then we had manzana de coco, which is what happens when the coconut has been on the ground for a long time and starts to sprout. the inside of it tastes like an apple! it's kind of weird. it was interesting to learn about though.

 [if i'm going to drink the baby throw up, i'm at least going to get a photo out of it.]

 [kayleekins and me!]

she took us up to this cave and we walked around inside it for a little while. i'm going to be honest, this was pretty cool but also terrifying. why? oh, because bats were flying around right above us. and then she points out these gigantic spiders with these crazy antennae and calls them "scorpion spiders". and then she's like "everybody turn off all your lights for a bit to truly experience the dark" and i'm like listen lady, this isn't batman where we need to embrace our fears. this is the real world where we turn on all the lights/straight up run our butts out of this bat trap! i didn't say that though, and we did get out of there unscathed. it was pretty neat!...once it was all over and we reflected from afar both physically and emotionally of course. then they took us up to this look out point where you could see for forever. beautiful!

[don't mind my very large, awkward camera bag. i'm slowly turning into a 55-year-old tourist lady.]

we did that for a few hours and by the time we got home, we were STARVING. correction, we were hangry. so we walked all the way down into town [doesn't actually take that long, but on an empty stomach in the middle of the day it somehow takes about five years] and sat down at the first place we found.

 the owner was so nice because he was basically desperate for customers. this town is so cute but it's weird because it's basically deserted right at this time of year. it's definitely got to be off-season. seriously, none of the businesses have change at all, even if you only need like ten pesos back in change. funny thing is is that we found out the only business that happened to have change was the little empanada cart! probably because they were only 35 pesos, so that's where everybody was eating in the town. 

anyways, the restaurant owner was nice and even ran to the grocery store for avocado when kaylee asked if she could get some on her sandwich. i got a big plate of spaghetti, because you know, when on vacation. i learned that "con salsa" just meant "with spaghetti sauce" not actually salsa. anyways, the owner sees the burn on my leg and he's freaking out and saying all this stuff in spanish and all i understand is "con salsa" and i'm thinking he's just talking about my food because he leaves and a little bit later brings out all of our food. so i'm chowing on my food and all the sudden, he comes toward me with a little thing of what looks like tomato paste and starts gesturing to put it on my leg. and of course i'm like what the what?!? apparently he WAS talking about spaghetti sauce earlier and saying that his cousin got a really bad burn and he put spaghetti sauce on it and it made it feel a lot better. and i didn't want to be rude sooooo yeah, i straight up just started rubbing that tomato paste on my burn! haha i seriously felt like a lunatic and laughing because he could honestly tell me to rub a pickle on it and i'd probably do it. anything to make it heal faster!

[this is my "are you SURE you're not just shhhh**ing me right now??" face to the owner haha.]

yeah, so i just walked around town after that with spaghetti sauce on my leg. oh, what a hoot! it was even better this time when the moto taxis came by asking if i wanted a ride because i'd flash them what looked like a bloody looking leg and they got all buggy-eyed and scream haha. so funny! we decided to walk along the beach down to this pier.

[yeah, that's a horse. just a free ranging horse on the trail. totally normal. except if i had the proper resources, you know i'd be stealing that little buddy and taking him home!]

[candid! my head's blocking kaylee of course.]

the second we got down there, i felt prickles all over my body, looked down, saw mosquitos all over my legs, and screamed my head off! an infestation! we booked it out of there right away [even though we still ended up with tons of bites] and walked home.
with tomato paste still on my leg.
like a psycho.
but what else is new?