Many of you may not know but I used to ride horses

Now before you start to visualise Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the film Pride and Prejudice

All the horses I rode were usually called Dobin

Their superpower was stopping and not moving

Not exactly what you want as you are riding with a group

Part of the trip to the Pantanal in Brazil was a horse ride

One of the great things about riding a horse is that other animals see the horse as another animal and they go about their day

Different from when they see a human, which is a predator and they then run

As it was summer we could ride in the water which was fun

As we were about to enter the water the guide spotted the anaconda as they tend to hang out there

Anacondas can grow to 3 meters long and this was certainly a large specimen 

What went through my mind was this

“Horse sees anaconda and decides to run

The horse would realise that the best way run would be to get the human (me) off it’s back

Leaving me on the ground

With the anaconda and I looking at each other

Then I imagined the end of a computer game

The screen would show

“Tim Hughes - game over””

I conjunien up my best horse riding skills … which is not that many

Turned the head of the horse away from the snake

There is a psychological trick you can do on a horse to make it speed up without kicking or whipping it

I leaned into that trick and then we had momentum away from the snake

Phew!

Into the water we went and away from a very large snake