On a little bit of a purchasing whim, we booked two tickets to Puerto Vallarta with no plan on how to spend our time there, other than to find beachy activities to take our minds off the gray, Pacific Northwest December back home. We figured we would try a little bit of everything—lounging on the beach, wandering the quaint town streets, snorkeling, perhaps a boat ride.

It was one of those types of trips that you expect to enjoy and to remember fondly, but will otherwise blur into other similar memories of other beach trips. One of my favorite things about life is that you have no idea when something mundane is about to turn into a story you will tell for the rest of your life. This trip was one of them.

I skimmed a few paragraphs on a travel website of a boat tour promising some snorkeling, some beaches, something about a trip to a waterfall. Vaguely aware of details and only searching a meeting time and location, I clicked the button to book and purchase the trip. We’d head out the next day.

On the boat, we made our way to the snorkeling spot, and then to the beach. I mentally checked the items off the list I somewhat remembered from the website. What was next; a waterfall? Something like that.

As we pulled into the little bay and boarded a smaller boat to drop us off on the sandy beach, the tour guide let us know there were two options to travel to the waterfall: by foot or by horse. I had ridden a horse only once in my life beforehand; my husband had zero horse experience. It sounded like the perfect opportunity to jump on the back of a horse!

“I haven’t really done it, but don’t worry; horseback riding is fun!” I cheerily told Douglas. Somehow, I did not soften the worry from his eyes.

We were the first in line to get our horses. After paying, a man walked a horse over to me, pulled out a step stool, and motioned for me to mount the horse. “He’ll probably give me instructions once I get settled,” I thought.

Nope.

He let go of the horse and away we went. I looked over my shoulder to see if there was something I was missing, but no one was paying attention to me. They were getting Douglas ready with his horse.

“Umm, I guess we are going to the waterfall right now?” I called out to Douglas, half as a question and half as a statement. Trying not to panic about riding a horse I didn’t know and going to a waterfall I didn’t know, I kept turning over my shoulder to see if Douglas was ready with his horse yet. Sure enough, barely on the saddle, he was sent off in my direction.

We splashed through a river, and it was when we reached the other side that I realized that we were, indeed, never going to receive instructions for handling a several hundred pound beast. We were off to the waterfall. At least, that’s what I told myself to keep calm. “Of course, the horse knows the way,” I called back to Douglas, but mostly to reassure myself. “I’m sure they do this multiple times per day. So, we don’t need to worry about anything. Right?”

Silence. Probably coming from a man just enjoying his ride through the natural beauty of Mexico; I’m pretty sure he was not scared speechless.

That’s when my horse decided that, if it was going to complete this task ahead of it, then the sooner we get there, the sooner he’s done working. So, he picked up his speed. I started bouncing around in the saddle. The horse went faster. More bumps, more speed, and just a woman unprepared in flipflops and a beach dress quickly finding herself trying to determine what the maximum velocity of a horse is and how much worse this ride could get. One last look behind me showed everyone else in the group trailing in my horse’s dust.

“You’ve got to get this horse to stop or you’ll fall off,” I reasoned with myself. Being in Mexico, I asked myself, “How do you say ‘stop’ in Spanish?” At this time, my high school Spanish had rusted away and fallen off like a swing on an abandoned playground, unable to be repaired while bouncing along at near maximum velocity.

But somehow, in the back of my brain that was bouncing around in my skull, I conjured up an image of the stop signs I had seen in Puerto Rico: PARE. With some fake bravado I announced to the horse, “PARE!”

But the horse did not pare.

Shoot, that didn’t work, I thought. What else do I know in Spanish? Then my jumbled brain recalled the Mexican stop signs, which said something different: ALTO. With less bravado, I pleaded to the horse, “ALTO!?!”

But the horse did not alto.

“Whelp, I just used up all my Spanish vocabulary to no avail,” I internally panicked. Now what do I do? There was only one thing left: cry out to God.

“Oh, GOD!” I screamed.

Neither the horse nor God responded to my prayer.

Faster and faster we traveled, like the horse thought it could actually travel faster than the speed of light, go back in time, and have never partnered with me in the first place.

We continued barreling down the beaten path. I resigned my body to being a flipflop-wearing ragdoll on the back of a horse, because what else was there to do beside admit that I was powerless over the horse, my life had become unmanageable, and to turn my life over to the care of God as I understand Him?

I was prepared to ragdoll my entire way to the waterfall when suddenly my horse decided to slow down. The world around me became serene. Everything was peaceful. I could see leaves dancing in the breeze. And I could hear the sound of another happy horse trotting up close to us.

Sidling up beside me was a Mexican woman who had been on tour with us all day. Clearly in control of her horse, and clearly able to speak Spanish, I knew this was my chance to find out how to stop a Mexican horse. I’d better learn now before my horse took off again.

“Hey, how do you tell a horse to stop?” I asked her. “I already tried pare and alto but it didn’t listen to me.”

“Oh,” she replied. “You go like this”— she pulled back on the reigns—“Whooaa.”

Apparently, my horse didn’t speak Spanish after all.