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Spain Articles written in 2005 and published in the Andalusian Magazine

ARTICLE #1

Spain -

Even after all of the research that I put into our trip to Spain I was not quite prepared for the culture shock. I had a long list of places that I wanted to go to in Spain and it was one of those trips that would come along once is a long while - if ever again. I plotted and planned and e-mailed and mapped and thought I had everything all planned out. Three to four farms a day did not seem unreasonable to me. At least it sounded like a good plan. I had been warned on the culture differences in Spain and how it is rude to just come to see the horses and not stay to be entertained by the owners and stay for a drink and a snack or even a full meal. So, I went back and revamped the schedule and narrowed it down again. We had a lot of driving to do so we had 1-3 farms scheduled per day. I had been e-mailing brokers and breeders for months using an on-line translation program. I had searched out and found hundreds of website links for breeders in Spain. If it was on the web and had to do with Andalusian horses - I had found it. I had researched importing and made many phone calls and e-mails to transporters and quarantine stations and laboratories. After months of research we were ready to go.

Off to Spain I eagerly went with my friend Elizabeth who had already been to Germany to purchase horses and also to Spain to search for a horse. It was a hard sell to convince my husband to let me go. Once he gave the "OK" I hurried to order my tickets before he changed his mind! I was surprised that he actually wanted to come along too. He could usually stand a few hours of looking at horses but I figured that 8-10 solid days of horses and he would go nuts. I planned to go a few days ahead of Ray to get some of the "nose to the grindstone" work out of the way before he came a few days later.

I left DFW airport at 5 pm and landed in Madrid at 1 pm Spain time - 15 hours later. I arrived fresh after 8 hours of sleep on the plane aided by a doctor’s prescription to help me adjust to the 7 hour time change. Elizabeth had arrived earlier in the day and went with a broker to see some horses while she waited for me to arrive. Armed with my menagerie of Spanish phrase books I rented a car that I could get all 6'3" of me into and drive without bumping my head at every little dip in the road. All I cared was that I could shift the standard pedals and get in and out without doing any major contortions.

I felt like a horse out of the starting gate rested and rearing to go and could not to get started. I tried to buy a calling card at the airport but the tobacco shop was sold out. Later, I discovered just how hard it was to find a pay phone. After about 4 Euros in change I managed figure out the pay phone and contacted the broker that my friend was with. They suggested that I go outside of the car rental area and wait just before you pay to get out of the airport. I was soon to encounter my first round-a-bout which I through many times for the next hour as I went all around and through the airport and through the construction zones trying to get to the designated meeting place.

In Spain, once you exit the highways you are lucky to find a street sign every few miles and you are very likely to find about 3-4 round-a-bouts along the way. The signs usually give the next town or city but almost never does it just say that you will be going north, south, east or west on that road. If you are not a local it certainly can make getting around tricky. It is really helpful to have someone navigate while you drive so that you are not juggling maps and a having a compass is handy too.

We followed the broker to several little farms that we would never have found on our own with even the best of directions. The stables can be in the strangest places. One stable we went to was the “local attraction” for a nice restaurant/bar and another that was between 2 condominium buildings in the middle of a city. Some of the horses were quite nice but also quite a bit out of both of our budgets.

We would have liked to have seen a few more farms but had to be on our way to drive to La Ventanilla to see their horses that evening. Maria McCarty was so kind as to mail me a detailed map of directions in Spain from California and call me several times before our trip to Spain to chat and give advice. We had no problems driving straight to the hotel in Medina del Campo, Valladolid. The drive over the mountain pass was just gorgeous. Not what you would expect to see in Spain. Once we hit the higher elevation of the mountain pass it was snowing heavily and all of the mountain pine trees and landscape was covered in snow. It was gorgeous and I had to stop to take some photos.

At the hotel we handed to bar tender our letter that Maria sent with me telling them to contact Manuel Vicente the owner of La Ventanilla. We got settled in our rooms and then Manuel was promptly there to pick us up. It was unusually cold that February so we spent several chilling hours viewing Manuel’s horses while snow flakes flew all around us. We saw some nice stallions, yearling and weanling fillies and a couple of cute newborn foals. We stayed late into the evening and then for dinner Manuel treated us to a wonderful dinner at the hotel. Between the Spanish that Elizabeth knew, calling Maria on the phone for a little translation help and Manuel's vivacious personality and some delicious food we had quite an enjoyable dinner and nice ending to our first day in Spain.

That morning we found Manuel downstairs at the hotel and he showed us a few more horses of his friends before we left and a quick tour of the town. On hindsight, I wish I had taken up Manuel’s offer to take a second look at his 2 fillies that I like in the day light. It was a shame that we had built in such a tight schedule and had to be on our way to an appointment with a farm in Madrid. It took the two of us navigating the roads but we successfully arrived at the farm - although a bit late. They are located atop a hill overlooking Madrid and it was so incredibly windy that I could hardly stand up to video the horses outside in the arena. We found some nice dressage prospects for Elizabeth and really liked the Yeguada Militar stallion there. We decided that she would try to come again on her way home to ride the horses when it was not so windy and miserable.

We set off on our way to Albacete and quickly learned all about the traffic jams in Madrid. We quickly re-routed our travel plans which turned out to be a nice scenic drive through rolling hills and acres and acres of neatly planted olive trees. We made up quite a bit of time once we were back on the main highways - even after a small unplanned detour. It is just amazing how fast people drive on the highways in Spain. We were traveling at 130-140 km/hr and the cars would just fly by you so fast that it would whip your car back and forth like getting passed standing still by and 18 wheeler - they must have been going well over 100 mph. One thing you can say about the drivers in Spain is that they are much more polite than here in the USA. They turn on their left blinker as a signal for you get out of the way so they can pass. They politely let you on the highway and the blinkers actually mean something besides hurry up so they can cut you off.

That evening we met up with Elizabeth's friend Shelly who invited us to dinner with some of her friends who were also PRE judges. We had some cocktails and then met up a large group of their neighbors and friends at the restaurant. We ate dinner at a quaint restaurant in a back alley that we would have never found in a million years. We had a private room upstairs all to ourselves that was dedicated to a local bull fighter. They had his amazingly tiny pink sequined bullfighting outfit on display in a lighted museum case and photos and newspaper clippings filled the walls. We had many rounds of local dishes such as fried calamari and a dish of tiny fried octopus with fresh lemon squeezed on top. They tried to tease me for not eating the heads of the fried octopi if they had black eyes I could see so I teased them right back that they probably wouldn't want to eat mountain oysters unless they grew up with them (not that I would eat them either)! We had a fabulous meal of steaks, sautéed potatoes and sautéed green beans and white asparagus, dessert and then a really strong Spanish liquor made out of honey that will grow hair on your chest. And of course lots and lots of talk about horses!

The next day Shelly took us to look at some horses at a friend's farm nearby. We were quite impressed with the facilities, indoor arena and stables. It was quite a display of what money can buy. The horses we found there had excellent movement and pedigrees too. It was so bitter cold that I we were content to drink coffee inside the covered arena in front of the space heater while the assistants lunged and rode the horses while we watched and chatted. We said goodbye to Shelly and thanked her for the wonderful dinner and escorting us to see the horses and headed off to Alicante to see one more farm before meeting up with Ray back in Madrid.

We actually made good time back to Madrid that night and got there by about 11pm. I had printed off directions from the internet on how to get to the hotel. Too bad the internet site’s directions were incorrect and the address was for the sister hotel across town. Well, not that it mattered much anyway. My Aunt is a travel agent and tried to warn me to just take a taxi to get around while in Madrid. I said “No, I'll be alright. I am really good at getting around." In Madrid they have the street signs only every so many blocks and always in a different location on the buildings. After a long while we discovered that we had wandered all across Madrid to the old quarter where the streets were so tight and narrow that we worried our car was going to get stuck passing through. The people in Spain are so friendly it was easy to get someone to come over to the car and give directions. After an hour and a half later we decided we had better just pay a cab to take us to the hotel. That was easier said than done. Madrid is just crawling with nightlife and people walking everywhere so there was plenty of taxis but they always had people in them. We could not find an empty taxi to save our lives! I practically pushed Elizabeth out of the car to run over and grab and empty taxi once we found one. At long last we made it to the hotel around 2 am.

As a last minute thought Elizabeth before we left for Spain had suggested I ask Lisa Hurlong if there was any places that we should be sure to go to while we were in Spain since she lived there. Lisa and I had been working together to arrange a Juan Llamas clinic for our Southwest Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Club in Texas and she wrote back that she just happened to be driving into Madrid that weekend to help Yeguada La Parrilla translate their website. She was so kind to invite us to the farm to see their horses and to have a lunch at the farm with Juan Llamas and the owner. The horses they showed us were excellent and the lunch with Juan Llamas was the highlight of the trip for us and particularly my husband Ray. Juan was delightful and witty and very entertaining at lunch. We thoroughly enjoyed the conversation about the horses and the food they served for lunch. We had the traditional dish of Paella - saffron flavored rice and chicken and red peppers and jalapenos. I have never had a jalapeno that had no fire to it whatsoever. The dish was served from a gigantic round iron pan that was so big it would not fit into any American oven. The wine we had at lunch was amazingly fruity and light and the oranges they offered after lunch were the best I have ever had in my life. After lunch we drove south to Sevilla. We stopped at a Parador in Carmona for a late dinner and were treated to so many amazingly wonderful deserts that you could have made a meal of it.

One of the places that we went to in Sevilla was where we accidentally found the mare that I tried to buy in Spain. We had been all over the Sevilla area and even to the famous Cardenas farm. Elizabeth was on her way home to the USA. I wanted to cancel our last day with our translator since we were not seeing the quality I had hoped to with her and I was ready for a break. I wanted to go sight seeing or back to the Cardenas farm to see their stallions for sale. My husband said No Way! You are here to see horses and we still have not gone to see several mares that she had been telling us about that had Military lines. Reluctantly, I agree to do one more day with her. English was her 3^rd language after German and Spanish and she misunderstood my price ranges. She had been trying to find adult mares in the price range I have her for weanling and yearling fillies so we were not seeing very good quality.

The mares turned out to move well and looked decent enough for the price but did not seem special enough to me to import to the USA. I was ready to call it quits for the day. I still had one more farm that I wanted to go to before I had to catch a plane to Barcelona. Just as were about to leave the 3 mares took off out of a walk door to the arena and ran across a very busy street into a field of grass. We all wanted to help catch the horses and they said “No - No we'll just get an older mare out and they will all follow her back to the paddock”. We were standing there talking and out of the corner of my eye I saw a horse that sent me running out the gate after her. I heard Ray behind me telling the lady that I had found what I was looking for! He could tell by the way I ran off all excited out the gate and after the mare.

I could hardly wait for them to bring her back so I could see if I had actually seen what I thought I did in that fraction of a second as she passed by. I asked who was that, was she for sale, how much, can't I just follow them up the hill to the pen. It seemed like eternity before she came back down the hill. To my delight they came up with a reasonable price on her even though it was actually twice the amount they wanted for the other fillies. She was the kind of mare that you don't usually find for sale – they tend to hide the good ones so you don't get your heart set on a horse they don't want to sell.

My heart was racing and I was so excited I was almost jumping up and down. They brought her to the arena and let her trot around a bit. Even though she was a lot overweight, a little lighter in the bone, shorter in height, and a little longer in the back I was planning to buy I still fell in love with her. She just had that “look” about her and a lot of presence. I could see the potential as a breeding mare and was busy imagining what her babies could look like and which stallions I might use. The one thing that I really was not sure I could live with was that she did wing more than I thought I would accept. They happened to have a 2 year old colt that was by her at the stable. He was already sold but they brought him out to show to us and he was exactly what I thought she would produce. He must have been 6-7 inches taller and had a long leggy look to him with a nice short back, a lot of suspension, fluid movement and a light floaty trot. Her colt moved much straighter than her and I really, really liked her and wasn't sure what to do. I decided the best thing was to get my vet's advice when we got home and that I would let them know in a week.

To be continued…..

By Julie Tupper

ARTICLE #2

After spending 7 days in Spain there was only one horse that I could not get out of my head. As we waited at the airport for our short flight to Barcelona from Sevilla I replayed the digital pictures and video over and over and over of the mare we had just found near Sevilla that day. There was something about this mare that I could not get out of my head. She was not exactly perfect – but what horse is? There were many small things about her that I would tweak if I could but I still could not get her out of my head. She just had that whole “package” about her and a showy personality too.

We arrived in Barcelona late in the evening and found our favorite, reasonably priced hotel chain the “Ibis” nearby. We arrived just after the hotel’s restaurant had closed for the night. We were tired of eating sandwiches from the gas stations or Panaderías (pastry shops) so we unloaded our things and decided to drive around and look for a restaurant. How hard could that be – right? It seemed that they must have placed the airport on the outside of town and try as hard as we might – we just could not find anyplace to eat that we could see from the highway. Finally, we did see a restaurant high up on a hill but it was quite a maze to try to get there from where we could see it from the highway.

Barcelona is such an old city that as it expanded they had to place much of the downtown highways in tunnels or with many overhead bridges. Every time we exited off the highway we only found residential neighborhoods so we would get back on the highway. Much of the time we drove nearly underground with nothing but 20’ high walls on either side to look at. Several times we thought we exited onto a different highway only to see it had the same name as the one we just exited. It made it difficult to find our way around. My map just had little yellow lines for highways but no enlarged box detailing the highway names. I should have prepared better.

I hate to admit it but we drove around within about a 25-mile radius of our hotel for 2 hours before we arrived at that restaurant that we could see but not get to – only to find that it had already closed for the night. It was another ½ hour before we could find a gas station where we could buy a sandwich and some chips. After such a long day of looking at horses and then traveling and driving all around - a sandwich and a can of Pringles never tasted so good!

The next morning we had arranged to meet with a broker and see some farms south of Barcelona. She took us to 3 farms that day and we were very pleased with the quality of the horses that we saw. It certainly makes a difference to have a good broker that knows what you are looking for and which farms will have horses you will like. What a relief it was to see so many nice horses in such a short period of time after our almost wasted trip to Sevilla with a person that turned out to not actually be a broker.

As we drove from the first farm we passed some aqueducts that were right on the side of the highway. I made a mental note of the location and was able to stop on our own the next day. We were running tight on time for an appointment to see horses but I could not go all the way to Spain and not stop to see such a site. I took a little video and shot a few pictures and then I looked up from taking pictures and noticed my husband Ray standing atop the aqueduct. They had stairs so you could walk across the aqueduct to the other side of the ravine.

I could not get over the fact that these structures were thousands of years old and they were in near perfect condition with hardly any erosion. The stones were so close together that you could not get the edge of your fingertip into the seams at all. I marveled at skill and craftsmanship it must have taken to carve the stones into perfect shapes and then stack them all 60-80’ in the air. I wish we had more time to see more of the history and culture of Spain while we were there.

There was a gorgeous black stallion at the very first place we went to see. I knew he must be way out of my budget but I could not resist going into his stall to meet him. He had the most beautiful face and intelligent eyes. He had the classic round build and high set neck and everything else you would want. He was friendly and polite - one that is so easy to handle that you would think he was a gelding. He was the type of stallion that you want to have at your own farm. He nuzzled back as I had to hug him farewell. I almost broke my heart to leave him behind. He was the one other horse from my trip that I though about often after I returned.

We were a little slow to catch on but life in Spain just does not move at the pace that we Americans are used to. Everything takes longer that you would expect and there is no sense of urgency for anything unless, of course, you are in the left lane of the highway (those people are always in a hurry). When people say let’s stop for a quick dinner in Spain – they mean only 1 ½ to 2 hours. We imagined a 30 minute quick bite to eat and had to watch the minutes tick by until it was 45 minutes before dark.

One thing I think I will never forget about Spain is my dinner that evening. We were eating and chatting about horses. I was happily eating my vegetable soup when I noticed some sort of hairy wiggly-jiggly grey lump in my bowl. I stirred my soup and had a closer look at this strange object in my food. I asked our broker jokingly if this might possibly be a cow lip because for the life of me I could not imagine anything else that it might be. She matter-of-factly said that it probably was! I said you are joking right? Nope. That was the end of my appetite for the day needless to say.

One of my favorite places to visit was XXXXXX (Sorry, we have since had a BAD experience with this farm - so I do not want to list their name anymore. IF you have the article in a magazine please do not go to this farm. They are not honest. Note added 12/29/06). It was on the list of places I found on the Internet and wanted to see so I asked our broker to come with us to translate. Our broker took us there late the first day. We arrived late in the afternoon just as it was starting to get dark. We all decided that we should look at the mares in the pasture first since there were lights in the barns and we could see the other horses after it was dark. We really could not see much outside since it got dark so fast after we arrived so we went to the indoor arena. There they showed us several of their breeding stallions and show mares. We went for a tour of the extensive barns and then settled in the kitchen of their soon-to-be private hotel. We all sat around the large table and talked and drank wine for hours and had a very enjoyable time.

The owner XXXXXXXXX was the most down to earth easygoing proprietor we had met. He was the owner of a construction company and demolition was our family business so we had plenty to talk about besides horses. He was a very entertaining host and was as comfortable as I am going about wearing mud boots and tromping in the pastures with the horses. He enthusiastically explained how he irrigates the alfalfa fields each year and rotated the pastures for the mares and personally showed us all around his farm and each of his horses. Nothing but the best for his horses and it showed in the healthy shiny coats of his horses.

My husband enjoyed his company so much that we came a second day to the farm to see the mares that we could not see in the dark. I was happy to come for another visit because Mr. Sanchez was such an interesting host and I wanted to keep my husband happy and we could stop to see the aqueducts along the way. After all, Ray had just put up with 8 days solid of looking at horses from dawn until dusk.

I reluctantly canceled the appointments for the next day because they were some of the places I most wanted to visit. This change of plans would lead to a second trip to Spain in 2004 to visit the farms that we missed on this trip.

While we were at the airport waiting to return to the USA we discussed taking the video tape of the mare we found in Sevilla to my vet. After seeing me replay the video over an over and talk so much about this one mare Ray had me call and make and offer on her before we even left Spain. As we returned home I thumbed through all the horse magazines that I picked up at the airport and dreamed about the mare I had made an offer on.

The week after we returned to the USA - Madrid was bombed by terrorists on exactly the day I would have arrived in Madrid had I changed my schedule. Thank goodness I had not moved the dates forward a week as my husband suggested so I would have more time to prepare for the trip. It did cause the horse’s blood for the Piroplasmosis test to be lost and have to be recollected again.

My translator/sort- of-broker that had found the mare Debla for me was trying to be helpful and investigate having the mare exported for me. All I wanted was for her to have the blood collected and sent to the USA for testing. She told me the vet would not forward the blood on to the USA until it tested negative in Spain. It was frustrating wait with many delays. I had to tell her that she was wasting all her time trying to export a mare that did not even have a negative test result and all her work would be for nothing if she failed her test and to please focus on getting the blood to the USA for me. Just as I was about to have my USA transporter arrange for a veterinarian to recollect the blood and send it to the USA I received an e-mail with the results. After 5 weeks of waiting, I learned that I was not able to import her.

After so much time to sit and wait and make plans for the future I was crushed that I could not get the one mare that I really wanted. It was a couple of depressing day until my friends cheered my up by saying that there was a better one out there for me and that was the reason I did not get this one mare. It did not take long before the search was on for another mare. I began searching the classifieds and the breeder’s websites all over again. Little did I know my next trip to Spain would be before the end of the year.

By Julie Tupper