Sunday, March 1, 2026· Finca Vista Hermosa
Seventeen Names Running Free Across the Pastures
By Nilson
Along the trails and hillsides of Fundación Loros, seventeen horses live without a stable to confine them. At dusk you can watch them moving on their own through the vegetation — two white ones along the dirt track, a chestnut grazing at the edge of the field — as though the entire property were theirs, because in some quiet way, it is. Their names are Lucero, Mariposa, Rosita, Estrella, Bohu, Pony, Blanquito, Coroso, Zipacoa, Rambo, Albino, Don Quijote, Indio, Sombra, Canario, Palomo, and Luna, and each name carries a different story.
Among them, three are spoken of by the team with particular pride. Indio arrived from the polo fields and is now considered one of the finest horses on the grounds. Albino is the foundation's registered breeding stallion, with three of his offspring already wandering the pastures, indistinguishable from the rest. And Bohu, the eldest of them all, has been walking these hills for six years — longer than many of the volunteers who have come and gone.
During the cattle work, these horses earn their keep, and when visitors arrive from every corner of the world, it is they who carry them along the trails of the reserve. But most of the time they simply graze free on the green hillsides, beneath a sky that sometimes turns heavy with cloud and sometimes offers that golden afternoon light that makes everything look like it belongs in a painting.
About the author
Nilson
Nilson begins every morning in the stable, milking while the light barely grazes Cerro El Peligro, his favorite corner of the farm. He reads animals with quiet precision: a dull coat, weepy eyes, or a hesitant gait at first rising are signs that never slip past him. He remembers clearly a cow that kept collapsing from weakness in her legs, and another with a wound that refused to close. The hardest part, he says, is when an animal falls ill and the diagnosis doesn't come. His vision of the future is simple and exact: a flock of loros sweeping freely over the land, and the neighbors stopping to look up.
