Senor Tortilla and Lisa Marie

Two friends visited La Bocana with us last weekend. Before leaving San Diego, we looked at this blog and I showed them Margery's beautiful photo of the wild horses. Lisa Marie was immediately taken by the idea of seeing the wild horses while we were in La Bocana. Joe and I explained that we have only seen them few times over the years and each of those times, they were far up on a ridge.

We arrived on a Saturday and talk of seeing the wild horses persisted all weekend. On Sunday evening, Lisa Marie and Nancy decided that the next morning, they would hike up the road over the hill behind the fishing village (where there is often a guard) as that was where Joe and I saw the horses in December. We stressed that the horses could be anywhere in the valley and it would probably be a fruitless endeavor. And we planned to leave on Monday morning. I suggested that we all think positive thoughts and encourage the horses to come to us so we don't have to go on a wild horse chase.

Sunday night, we didn't shut the gate to our property since we hadn't seen any cows around and we were planning to leave the next morning. And, well, we were feeling a little lazy.

Monday am, Joe woke up early to take photos of the blooming flowers and what did he see?

A horse in our yard! Joe ran in to get us and we all went out to see the horse. Was it a wild horse? We didn't know.

Lisa Marie grew up with horses and she decided to investigate. Armed with a head of romaine lettuce, she proceeded to inch closer and closer to the horse.

This took more than an hour. She saw that the horse was un-shoed, unbrushed, and the tail/mane was not trimmed. There was no brand or tag on the horse. Eventually, Lisa Marie was able to pet the horse.

He even seemed to like it. Note the white dot on his forehead. She coaxed him out of the yard and shut the gate. We named him Senor Tortilla.

After cleaning and packing up, we had about 45 minutes until we had to hit the road. We decided to drive over to the port and perhaps take a short hike up the hill to see the view. On the way there, Lisa Marie shouted, "Look! There's Senor Tortilla!" Sure enough, there was a horse up on the ridge.

We parked the truck and went up the hill with Lisa Marie running ahead of us.

As she neared the top, she saw several horses. She waited for the rest of us to catch up. We turned the corner and what do we see? 10 beautiful animals, including Senor Tortilla. Nine horses and one burro.

The horses wouldn't let us get close but Senor Tortilla stayed at the tail end of the group, often looking back at his new friend Lisa Marie. Eventually, they all went over the hill.

Could Disney have written a better horse story?

And yes, we did call Lisa Marie the Horse Whisperer.