Wild Horses of Corolla

For years, I have heard about the wild horses of Corolla and I have always wanted to see them. The idea of wild horses just fascinates me and I truly love to see animals in their natural habitats. These horses are the descendants of Mustangs brought over by the Spanish and have been roaming these shores for 500 years. Their highly specialized diet only includes native plants and grasses with no supplemental feeding. They cannot eat things like apples that other domesticated horses eat, as it could be very harmful to them.

Why you should take a tour

After reading about it, we decided to take a tour because even though we have a 4×4, I was afraid we wouldn’t find them on our own. I am so glad we did this because I was absolutely right. While you can drive on the beach, I think it would be much more tricky to drive inland through the dunes like we did without getting stuck, and not to mention not having any idea where you’re going.  You can’t just drive up on the beach and expect to see the horses, though you could get lucky. All of the horses we saw were slightly inland.

Besides, it was more fun to ride in an open air hummer than in our own car.  Our guide was fantastic and provided a lot of good information.

And, finally, it’s a great idea to take a tour because it’s a win-win. You get to see the horses and you are helping the horses. The company we used, Wild Horse Adventure Tours, donates part of their profits to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

Photo by Wild Horse Adventure Tours

Our Visit

We got incredibly lucky. There was a foal born on Mother’s Day that we got to see. Our guide who grew up here said he has never been able to see a foal this much or this close before, so truly we feel grateful for this experience. We watched him trot alongside his mother’s side and nurse.

We ended up seeing four different harems, which our guide said is about 25% of the herd. It’s so interesting hearing about how it all works with the stallions and mares. The stallions fight over the mares and some have large harems and others are content with just a couple of mares.

It was just such an amazing experience to see these magnificent animals and of course, so neat to see the foal. It is definitely something I will never forget.

The kids enjoyed it, but I think they got a little bored.  You bring your own carseats for kids to use, so they were strapped down and unable to wander, thank goodness. But, it was a little harder for them to see being in the inside seats.

A beautiful black pelican on the beach showing off.

I love how the egrets hang out with the horses. In fact, at one point, this one was standing on the horse’s back. They have a pretty good arrangement. The egret cleans the horse of bugs and gets a meal out of it.

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