Caballos de Paso, Ayacucho, Peru

Diane: Many posters around Ayacucho are advertising festivals. There's a trout festival (don't ask me what they do at a trout festival), a gastronomic festival, several crafts festivals, and lastly a caballo de paso festival. Tom says caballo de paso translates as walking horse. Since I'm not sure this is correct, I'm sticking with caballo de paso. In any event, caballos de paso are known for their graceful gait. Here are a couple of pictures of these lovely horses in the central plaza in Ayacucho. You can see a little bit of how spirited they are, how their front lower legs move, and how decorated they are.










So we headed out to the agricultural fair where the caballo de paso exhibition was being held. We got there an hour after the scheduled start time, but the horses and their owners were still milling around in a disorganized fashion.

We decided to check out the cattle show. They spent a lot of time talking about the various cow/bull varieties, how they moved, how they were hung, their size, and other items whose Spanish translation I did not understand. We drifted back to the horse exhibition after drinking some coconut water and coconut flesh, chowing on a pomegranate, trying on the latest in army apparel,






and checking out the tens of varieties of beans and lima beans. Lima beans are big here. They serve them regularly on the fixed menus. They roast and toast them and eat them as snacks. As I translated the Spanish to English and spelled it out, I realized that "lima bean" was probably named after the city of Lima and the pronunciation altered. Perhaps Lima was where English-speakers first encountered this Peruvian staple. One of the things I love about studying Spanish are all the eye-opening realizations about culture, history, and common linguistic roots. I'll have to check into this one.

But back to the horses. For this exhibition the owners were decked out in bright spanking-clean white clothing, including white straw hats.






The horses were decked out in their finest tooled leather, woven and beaded bridles and reins, cropped manes, and general finery. Mikki has a friend with caballos de paso, who spent $3000 to obtain similar high quality gear. It seems exorbitant sum by Peruvian standards.






The exhibition, although not amenable to still photos, was marvelous.