My most interesting and memorable experience so far from New Zealand was horseback riding on Waiheke Island with Emily and Claudia. I rode Marmite, a horse who thought he was a stallion but was not. Also keep in mind right before we knew exactly what horse we were going to be riding, Marmite tried to bite Claudia. This is apparently how Marmite got his name. It’s from the New Zealand spread you typically put on toast that’s bitter and Americans don’t usually like. Basically meaning he was a stubborn, didn’t like new people, and had a mind of his own. From the very beginning, controlling Marmite was extremely difficult. One of the first things the worker told us was don’t let the horses eat the grass; it goes against all their training. But all my horse wanted to do was eat the grass and plants that were along the trail. And keep in mind this horse was much, much stronger than I was meaning every time he tried to fight me to eat, he won and almost threw me over-top of his head. The only way to get Marmite to stop eating was when the other horses started walking, he would follow. We ended up on the side of hills, off the path, and barely out of the way of a car all because he wanted to keep eating. The funniest part was that going up hills, I could hear him breathing hard clearly indicating that he did not need anymore food. Even though the horse and I had very different ideas of how this should’ve been going, the view and experience overall was absolutely incredible. I’ve never ridden a horse on a beach before so getting to do that for the first time was so cool. Out of all the amazing views we’ve seen thus far, the view from the beach of the cove I think is my favorite.
