Once Mark was on his way I headed off to try to find an ATM that would work with my card - easier said than done at the 6th bank I finally got money so headed off on the underground down to Indepencia. It shouldn't be that hard to get money out of an ATM but so many of the banks don't recognise my card which is an HSBC card so you would think it would be a worldly recognised card but no.
Once at the pick up point I met 3 american girls, Kate, Dee Dee and Robyn who were all heading for polo too, all nice girls so I knew we would have some fun. Fernando our teacher arrived to take us out to the stables which were about an hour outside of the city.
The 3 girls are all in the military - Kate is a pilot, Dee Dee drives ships and Robyn is a marine - she didn't give much away about what she did on a day to day basis so with my imagination running riot as it usually does I have her down as Special Forces. They were all young and good fun and Dee Dee hadn't ever ridden before but she did really well.
We all got our hats on and off we went to the practice field get our horses and to learn the first thing in Polo - how to steer your horse! the best way is to lean into the stirrup of the side you want to go and turn your body the way you want to go so if you want to go left, lean into the left stirrup and turn to the left and the horse will go that way. The other way is using the reigns but the horses mouths are sensitive with the bit so you can imagine in a polo match you turn and twist loads so its not fair on the horse to be pulled about by its mouth so much.
Here we are fresh and ready to go.....
My horse was Big Daddy - no idea how to pronounce his name or spell it so Big Daddy will do. He was bigger than the other polo horses which meant I had a bit of a longer stick as we were further off the ground. Big Daddy was a bit of a tricky horse to get started, a total tester, which is a horse that pushes to see how much knowledge you have an how much he can get away with not doing! I was kicking hard to get him to move so in the end Fernando suggested a whip - I hate whips normally but unfortunately Big Daddy needed the threat of something - I only had to use it sparingly as generally just showing him the whip was enough to get him into trot.
After we had been practicing hitting the ball for about 30 minutes I started to feel really unwell, I felt faint and that I needed to eat or drink something but I knew I didn't really need to as I had had free range scrambled eggs with a big baguette for my lunch and I had also had 3 huge mugs of ginger tea so I couldn't really understand why I felt like this. I felt like I needed to get off the horse but I wasn't going to do that as I wanted to learn to play polo! I just couldn't understand why I felt like this but Mark has Man Flu so I thought may be it was that but it had hit me so quickly and it is really not like me to be ill and not to get flu that quickly. So I carried on and after a few minutes I realised that it was Big Daddy who was taking my energy - he was an energy vampire! I have come across many human energy vampires and know how to spot them and protect myself from them but I had never come across a horse or animal energy vampire before but that was exactly what Big Daddy was. I put up Reiki protection for myself and sent out healing energy to Big Daddy - generally people who are energy vampires need healing so animals will be the same.
Within 10 minutes I started to feel better - isn't that amazing?! Its great that I have started to recognise these feelings in myself - if I had got off Big Daddy which was what I really wanted to do I would have drunk some water and eaten some nuts and thought thats why I was feeling better but the real reason would have been because he didn't have access to my energy any more as I wouldn't be riding him.
After I protected myself we were fine until I discovered how ungrounded Big Daddy was - after our practice and then we had a break we started to play a match and towards the end of the match someone in the distance fired a shot gun a few times - Big Daddy reared up on his back legs - my instinct kept me on him as I leant into his neck but at one point I thought he might go all the way over, he then put his front legs down and was bucking with his back legs, at this point I lost my left stirrup which would have been fine if the gun hadn't started firing again so Big Daddy was rearing up again and I could feel that I may have to make an exit strategy as he was quite uncontrollable but the last time I rode a horse that was uncontrollable and I hit the exit button I didn't ride again for 10 years and I really didn't want that to happen again and I have handled a lot of feisty horses in my years or riding so I knew I could handle this. I sat deep in the saddle (hard to do when your horse is rearing up!!) and put my right heel down in the stirrup and my left heel as far down as I could and gave one strong tug with the reigns giving him the signal to stop and he did! He was very jittery though when we had finished our rearing adventure. Horses that need grounded often are the once who are bouncy on their feet and have a habit of rearing, at the end of the whole session I spent a bit of time working with Big Daddy and grounding all four of his feet - I hope he feels much better for it.
Immediately after I had settle Big Daddy Fernando asked me if I wanted to get off and I said no as long as Big Daddy was going to be ok - that would have knocked my confidence to give up at that point and I surely had been through the worst with him?! So we carried on playing the match and Big Daddy and I went on to score the 6th and winning goal of the match (a complete fluke by the way!) so all was well even if it had been more of an adventure than i was looking for.
It was a good experience to have as I was so proud of myself for staying on and also continuing - horses are not robots, they do shite like this and its important to know that I can control the situation. If I had sat deep in the saddle and tugged his reigns on the first rearing perhaps he wouldn't have bucked or reared again - its all learning but I am pleased it happened as it has boosted my confidence. I do know how to ride and I can handle difficult horses - I always was able to when I was younger so why not now?
Here I am practicing hitting the ball - an impressive swing out don't you think?! (I probably missed the ball on this one!)
Leaning in to hit the ball (I think I did hit this one, hey its harder than it looks!)
another action shot and proof in the 2nd pic that I did actually hit one ball!
Fernando was a brilliant teacher so if you are going to BA and want to learn polo look him up - www.poloelite.com.
suzxxx - ps. here is a pic of where Mark went for the afternoon, he found it interesting but I reckon he would have loved polo!
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