Carriage-Driving Holiday in Rural Colombia - Colombia
8 Days / 7 Nights / 6 days of Carriage-Driving … a drive back into the Colonial times!
If you are an avid carriage driver and looking for an off the beaten track carriage-driving holiday, well, then this is it!
Resumen:
We know that as a driver you are automatically an enthusiast of antiquities and of the old days. So, on this Carriage-Driving holiday we will take you a few hundred years back in time…. all the way back to Colonial Colombia. To the time when great landlords ruled in South America. The 400-year-old Haciendas that you will stay in are the remains of this dominant period. But this is not the only thing that has survived from that period. The unpaved roads that connect colonial villages and haciendas, the landscapes, the culture, the way farmers work with horses on the field, it all stayed the same as centuries ago, as it all stood still in time.
During 8 days you will drive from one stunning Colonial Hacienda to the other, meet the hospitable owners, have lunch or dinner with them and discover in a unique way the soul of rural Colombia. The itinerary guides you through THE milk region of Colombia, where cows are still milked in the pasture and where horse and cart take the large milk jugs back to the farm or to the cooperative. Farmers in this region work mainly with Belgian draft horses which they simply call “Belgas”. Most of those Belgian draft horses are in fact the pure Flemish Horse. (original name: “Het Vlaamse Paard” – a breed that was extinct in Belgium and which they only managed to get back from the Americas in the 1980s)
Beside of this, Colombia is in general a truly remarkable horse country. Locals are just crazy about horses. They even have their proper horse breed, their national pride; “El Paso Fino Colombiano”. Literally translated as The Horse with the Fine Step. The Paso Fino Colombiano is a gaited horse with a sophisticated appearance and very much appreciated because of its smooth and natural gait.
But what kind of horses will you be driving? Our grooms will put mix-cross Belgian Draft x Colombian horses and Percheron x Colombian horses in single harness for you. The vehicles are four wheeled Marathon carriages with hydraulic brakes, crossbow suspension and air-filled tires. You will drive the carriage with a single horse and each vehicle has the capacity of 4 persons.
The idea of this trip is that you of course drive the carriage yourself. As carriage driving is a skill you are therefore expected to have some experience in driving. If you don’t really have experience in driving a carriage, but you are a horse person with experience, then of course you are welcome as well so we can teach you the harnessing, hitching, the driving and more advanced techniques. But no worries our Colombian drivers & grooms will always stay close. We take a maximum of 8 participants per group and/or 4 carriages, according to your preference from 1 to 4 persons per carriage. Keeping it small means that we can keep the quality of our service high.
You will be accommodated in real haciendas. Those colonial farms full of history are not hotels, but private houses. The only reason why the owners will be receiving you is because you share the same passion; horses. (some of them are into carriage driving as well) So, they exclusively open their doors for you! During this journey, all is included, from South American wines, fine gastronomy, private haciendas, to the constant assistance of grooms and a driver-tripleader.
And last but not least, on this trip, we invite you to get out of the carriage for a few minutes as you will have the chance to ride a pure-bred Paso Fino Colombiano and experience the smoothness of the gaited Colombian criollo horse, the Paso Fino Colombiano! A unique experience as this horse is so different than anything that you have ridden before. Welcome to Colombia!
