We did a couple of half day rides in Namibia at a place called desert homestead Trails or something like that I think. It's in the middle of the desert not far from the sosussvlei area, not a game ride as such, was still fun though. It's meant to be for experienced riders but they found a few horses that were ok for a group of us of mixed ability including a couple that had only been on a horse maybe 3 or 4 times before.

Great trip report, thx for posting, will def. add to "bucket list"

i have checked out those rides. not really that excited about them. right now i am mostly looking into doing the jordan wadi rum/petra ride which i have heard many people say was their favorite ride.

http://www.jordantracks.com/en/itineraries.html

cool, tx....any other random places you recommend? I've actually been to Jordan and think it's pretty awesome. My only concern with that link is their gallery makes it look like the ride doesn't see many landscapes but instead basically all similar desert. It'd be sweet to have a trip where you can go from desert to forest etc so you can get some change of scenery.

was the reason you didn't like what you saw with mongolia the nature or the services offered?

and don't get me wrong, i think the jordon landscape is awesome, but it looks somewhat one dimensionally awesome.

i loved azores. might be because i am swedish and the owner was swedish but other people there seemed to really like the place aswell. nice nature, wonderful friendly place, great food and drinks, good horses, cool rides, good value, easy to get there(for me) etc. i skipped the culture-excursions and just asked for more riding, 20euro/1h private lessons(i had 4/day some days) and tons of 4-6h rides. they are very flexible, just say what you want and you get it. if you want to do fishing they arrange it, if you just wanna ride they fix that. in fact they sometimes listen too well so you have to be careful what you say, i saw one of the instructors getting instructions from some expert visiting them and just casually asked her if he was gonna teach me also, the next morning they had booked me for a private lesson with him. he was very much overqualified to teach me
http://quintadaterca.com/home.en.html



yep, thats my fear aswell. but when you're riding you dont get as bored. the people i have talked to who have been there said the dessert looks different so you dont get bored, i have talked to like 5 who have done it. the only thing is that the horses(arabs etc) have very strong will so it can be a bit difficult to get them to stop, they say you just have to let them run until they run out of energy.

namibia, morocco, kenya etc you can get this. i liked the trails in spain, went from the mountains down to the sea, passing really different areas.

wrong seasons(summer is nice in sweden, the rest of the year sucks in mongolia), small horses, i prefer more modern stuff even when i am near nature etc.

probably, but it is really different from everything i have seen. maybe just to the 7day, i am not really that much into culture. same with masai mara, knowing what i know now i would have booked the 7day that skips deloraine, 2 in our group did that. after 7days you are full and satisfied with and dont really need the extra days of jumping.

The gallery on the Azores site looks really damn nice. Might have to look into that

And since when was riding horses girly!? That sentiment woulda gotten you up and shot in the wild west! I will say, though, it sure would be nicer without a certain male only feature. That is a pain in the ***.

i know, in most parts of the worlds it mostly guys riding, here in nothern europe it's like 99% girls.

according to the safari company they get like 80% women. that surprised me, thought there was gonna be more guys considering the price, the danger, africa, 10days etc.

some pics from azores:

Thanks for those pics. Looks really damn cool.

very good TR/pictures, thanks for sharing.

some photos the other in the group have taken:

bump to not archive yet

awesome thread, i'm not prone to jealousy but i'm feeling a bit of it right now.

awesome

looks really cool, thanks for posting

Awesome trip report. Thanks!

awesome thread, really a great read. Its certainly on my to do list !!!

This is my(OP's) new account, lost the email to the old one. I've since then went back to azores, here are some pics from that trip:

Funny this was bumped by a spambot today. I was talking about this report just yesterday while planning my own trip to Africa.

Because of work, I need to travel to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania next year. Hopefully, I can find some useful tips in this thread.