You learn a lot of things traveling. You learn how to look out for yourself and you realize things about other people’s cultures and you get a better sense of the world.
And, though you’re constantly surprised by the specifics of the things you’re figuring out, you sort of expect to learn those type of things. For instance, it’s logical that in traveling to foreign lands you would learn about foreign cultures. You didn’t know what you were going to learn, but it does make sense that you gained some insight into that general realm of knowledge.
Every once in a while, however, something totally unexpected crosses your path. When that happens, the preconceived notion you had about that absurdly random subject is suddenly, unexpectedly, done away with and replaced. It’s exciting, but it’s also slightly jarring. You didn’t expect to learn about that in this place, but such is the randomness of the world.
I, for instance, thought I knew how small horses could be. It wasn’t something I thought about a lot, but I did assume I had a pretty good grip on the general range of sizes a fully grown horse could be.
So when I got off the bus in a little hippie-town called El Bolsón and encountered those two little guys, well, I was a bit surprised. I was wandering around looking for my hostel, and there was some type of festival was going on throughout the town. I looked up, the crowd parted, and there were these two miniature horses.
“Hmmmm….those horses are very small. Are they baby regular horses? No, no baby regular horses have those disproportionally long legs. No, it seems those are adults, just super small. I know a couple of dogs bigger than those two horses. I guess horses can be pretty tiny.”
I paused, considering them.
“Alright now where is this hostel….”
