Horse riding in Te Anau

My first time horse riding in Queenstown was way too much fun. I didn't really think it could get any better at  Te Anau!

So how did we end up in Te Anau? We drove up to Te Anau, because we wanted to see Milford sound, which is a fjord. We heard many great things about it, about how beautiful it is, this and that. However even though Milford Sound has always been hyped up, and we had a natural instinct to believe what has been raved about, when we were there, we were disappointed. Apparently it rains like there's no tomorrow, pretty much every single week and there are rock falls and other dangerous things. So you have to be careful. It is a 2 hour drive from Te Anau, and we went on the a Real Journey's nature cruise. 

The weather was bad. As in extremely wind, rain, and fog that covered everywhere. You can see that in this picture, when my dad asked us to come up to take pictures, my sisters and I were nearly blown away by the wind.  And my dad's cap actually flew away! It's somewhere sitting on the bottom of the water now... 

Anyway, so our trip to Milford didn't work out that well. We were in Te Anau for 2 nights, and it's quite a quiet and small town. Small town people are always so friendly!

We were thinking of things to do, and since my dad just loved horse riding so much (he says he wishes he could 'rent' a horse and camp in the mountains), he popped up "What about horse riding?"

We did horse riding at Highride. It is operated by a family,  they offer horse trekking, as well as quad bike tours. Louise came to pick us up from where we were staying, and we drove up to a huge farm. 

We were greeted by many, many dogs. Very cute dogs in fact. One of the dogs, Liz actually followed us around on our horse ride. She is such a sweet, and obedient dog. 

Our horse riding guide was Lisa , a girl from Germany. She was really helpful and friendly! She even took the time to actually remember our names (and our names are Chinese). I rode on a really tall horse, Donald. He kept on eating grass and he was slightly a bit lazy at times. When I had to stop him, I had to say "Whoah Donald!"

Horses eating grass

We were over-looking a Hobbit film location!

 The scenery there is very pretty. We explored around a beautiful green forest, through high grasses and streams! When we were passing through high grass areas, Yii-May's horse, Missy, would particularly keep on eating. Kind of like a buffet for horses :)


We crossed four streams, which was a really cool experience.

My sisters, dad and I even enjoyed this horse riding session better than the one in Queenstown. The one in Queenstown is more commercialised, so the horse riding instructors aren't as helpful, and it was also very nice to have our own private little group (just my fam and I). I highly recommend doing horse trekking at Highride. 

Could you say that the Phangs are a horse riding family?

To finish the night off after a good day of horse riding, we had dinner at Distinct hotel. I had the rib eye steak, which I thought was very, very, very nice! The rest of my family got fish, and after my sisters had a bite, they wished they had gotten my steak. And dessert, there was this really interesting pistachio cake with ice cream and to-die-for peanut butter cheesecake! Mmmmm