The Rambling Rider: Equestrian Adventures

Having ridden my whole life I love to experience a new culture through its horsemanship. In Spain doma vaquera is used to manage aggressive fighting bulls by means of a 12 foot pole called the garrocha.
For a month my mum and I lived in the small Spanish city called Carmona, half an hour from Sevilla and easily accessible by bus. Known as the Morning Star of Europe because it is the longest continuously inhabited city in Europe, it is a true historical and culture crossroad, with a mixture of pre-Roman, Roman, medieval Christian and Muslim influences.
One of the wonderful things about Carmona, and southern Spain in general, is the blurring of the urban/rural divide, represented particularly well by the location of the Asociación Ecuestre de La Vega, which was a short walk from our tourist apartment in the heart of modern Carmona. There we found an authentic representation of Spanish equestrian culture. The concrete floor of the stable was indicative of its age, and horseshoes mixed into the concrete to make it stronger peeked out from the worn sections. Mum and I went on trail rides both through the surrounding Spanish country side and the historical parts of the city of Carmona, and one of these rides our guide, Maria Jose, discovered my interest in the native form of riding known as doma vaquera and offered me a lesson in it.
My mount was a wonderful horse named Cantinflas, named for a Mexican comedic actor in the vein of Charlie Chaplin. His comic appearance made him worth of the name, having a shaved mane, Roman nose, and tail cut short. He had already distinguished himself as a generous and brave animal when a child on a bike almost ran into him on one of our rides and he did not bat an eye.
Two Spanish mastiffs watched us enter the ring from their cave-like kennel. Despite their apparent docility, my suggestion that my mum put her hand through the bars was not met with enthusiasm. My lesson began with learning how to drag the garrocha in the dirt. I was happy for my helmet, for when the angle is wrong the garrocha hits you in the head. An attempt to learn the maneuver used to change direction, in which horse and rider pass under the garrocha, was foiled by the complication of the maneuver and my difficulty in understanding the instructions in my second language. I ended the lesson by successfully cantering around the ring, garrocha on my shoulder, providing a photo opportunity in which I appear to have an idea of what I'm doing.