Monteverde Part I: Mighty Mouse (aka "Things Best Left To a Stunt Double")

I should have ended the last post with “tune in next time…” because that would have enabled me to start this one with “when we last left the Gavins…"

In my last post, I recapped the kids’ 15 de septiembre show at school. What I did not mention is that Independence Day also brings with it a three day weekend. For the Gavin Fam, “Three Day Weekend” means “another opportunity to explore.” And so — right after the show — we were off to Monteverde for the long weekend!

Originally I was going to write a single blog post about our Monteverde trip but one event in particular merits its own post so let’s talk first about the “not so great” part of the weekend and then shift gears to the positive.

We arrived in Monteverde late on Friday afternoon and had a great time Friday night and Saturday. Going into Sunday morning, we had an ambitious plan for the day (horseback riding in the morning, a hike in one of the reserves in the afternoon, and then a night-hike for at least the boys that evening). Suffice to say that those plans ended up thrown out the window (“thrown” being the teaser word in that sentence).

Any-who. When we woke up on Sunday, Jack wasn’t feeling great so we called an audible and Audrey stayed with Jack while I took the other three kiddos horseback riding (something we have no experience doing, btw). We decided to go with a long-standing but small (family owned) outfit in town. Marvin owns about 25 horses and has everything from show-horses to horses specially trained to work with special needs kids. He has been in the business for 20+ years, has a great rep with the hotels, etc. All good.

Charlie gets used to being in the saddle.

There was supposed to be another family in our group but they canceled so we ended up with THREE guides and only FOUR of us (great ratio!). Again. All good

Ella and Charlie were put on smaller horses and rode alone. Liadan was put on an adult horse BUT he was specially trained to work with kids and one of the guides rode along side of her holding the reigns for her. With everyone comfortably on their horses, we set out on our 2-hour ride (up a mountain road to a dairy farm, around the farm, and back).

Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that even the “most secure” setups (guide to rider ratios, guide-alongside-the-young-un', etc.) aren’t foolproof when you are talking about animals. About 20 minutes into the trip, a car was passing us on the pothole-filled mountain road. I’m not 100% sure what happened but we think the car slipped in a pothole — end result is that the outside mirror of the car clipped the guide’s horse.

Not surprisingly, the horse didn’t enjoy being hit (albeit lightly) by a car and proceeded to rear up, come down hard, slide on the road, and fall. The guide had to leap off to avoid having the horse land on top of him and in the process had to let go of the reigns of Liadan’s horse. To his credit, the guide popped right back up (despite an injury to his leg) but it was too late b/c the horse that fell ended up kicking Liadan’s horse (hard) on the way down.

What followed looked like a horse-audition for an action movie. Liadan’s horse (named “Coyote” btw) TOOK OFF like a bat-out-of-hell up the mountain road with our little 6 year old hanging on for dear life. The lead guide (Marvin) took off after her and in a matter of seconds they were GONE from sight around the windy turns of the mountain road.

Suffice to say it was pretty freakin’ scary to watch as a dad. There were dairy farms on either side of the road, which means there were barbed wire fences on either side of the road. Her horse was zig-zagging back and forth (seemingly scared for his life) and if she hadn’t held on it would have been BAAAAAAAD).

Yet somehow, she did.

Eventually Marvin caught up to the horse and tried to cut him off going around another tight turn. In the immediate aftermath, I thought Liadan had been tossed. But evidently not. She said that "when the horse slowed down a little, I thought I should let go and jump because if I didn’t he might run away with me forever.” : (

So...not only did she somehow manage to hang onto a speeding and out of control horse (with no horseback riding experience), she also proactively JUMPED OFF a moving horse when she thought it was safe(st)!?!

The end result was a whole lot of bruising, some inflammation around the knee, some soreness all over for a few days, and a lot of scrapes and cuts (including a bad one on her knee and one on her ankle the was borderline for stitches, although we opted to go without).

You can imagine my relief when I finally caught up to Marvin walking back down the mountain road holding Liadan. He, too, was quite shaken. And quite impressed with the way Lia had handled herself. He said "she looks tiny but she is a brave and strong one.”

I wasn't going to include this in the post but there was something so peaceful about it that I am adding it at the last minute. I snapped this pic after Liadan practically passed out that night. We were very happy to have her lying there next to us (she crashed in our bed that night).

He offered to take her back out for a ride the next time we are in Monteverde. I’m not sure we’ll take him up on that offer but I do think that at some point (when the bumps and bruises heal) we will let LuLu get back on a horse for a short ride somewhere. You know the whole “gotta get back on the horse” saying. Of course, that raises the point that if there IS such a saying and everyone KNOWS that saying…why don’t we all have a tad bit more concern about putting ourselves (and our kids) on horses? Hmmm… Another question for another day.

Playing off Marvin’s assessment of Liadan (“tiny but brave and strong”), Audrey and I focused on PLAYING UP the fact that she was so brave and AVOIDING discussion of this as a legitimately scary incident. At one point, Audrey told Liadan she was “Mighty Mouse” — which sadly resulted only in raised eyebrows from all the kids. What kind of world do we live in where kids have never heard of Mighty Mouse? Sigh… After showing the kids a Mighty Mouse episode on YouTube, Liadan has now decided that she likes this new nickname-of-the-month from Audrey (Audrey is big on nicknames for the kids…both longstanding ones and ones that only last a month or two).

We are proud of our little Mighty Mouse and, of course, relieved and happy that things turned out the way they did. But the next time that she wants to make an action scene like that, we are going to strongly suggest that she call in a stunt double.

A few days later...she wouldn't let the ankle or knee gashes keep her down (this is on one of the school playgrounds).