Just come back from 2 weeks at the Riu Merengue in Puerto Plata and had to write a review about Rancho Lorilar. This is my first review and felt I had to as we had so much fun riding with Angel and Alex. Family, husband 52 and son 13 (who have never been on a horse before), daughter 10 who has ridden a couple of times and myself 47 who is an experienced rider decided to go on the 1/2 day ride. Had e-mailed Joyce who runs to ranch several times before visit with lots of questions and she always e-mailed back promptly. The day after arriving at hotel phoned Joyce and arranged a ride. The truck came to pick up promptly and they made sure we put our seat belts on. This gave me confidence that they were safety conscious. On arrival at the ranch I was welcomed by Joyce saying wheres Heather and it was great to finally meet her after all our e-mails. I paid once I got to the ranch. Joyce gave us a very humerous yet serious safety talk, we were asked to fill in forms about our ages, weights and riding ability, we were fitted with riding hats and matched to our horses. The horses are very well looked after, they would not let one man ride because he was obviously over their weight limit which is about 16 st. There were about 10 of us in the ride with 3 guides who could not have been more helpful. My husband had a video camera and because he had not riden before found it difficult to video and ride so Angel took the video and rode in front in several places to video us. We rode for about 1 hr, stopped for a drink(included) at a place with excellent views and then rode back to the ranch. We enjoyed the day so much that my daughter and I booked a full day the next week. However when they picked us up we were told we could not do the full day as there were only us to do it so we had to do another 1/2 day. This 1/2 day was even better than the first as we rode through sugar cane fields, streams and puddles and did more cantering. The drink stop was not as nice but the riding made up for this and after all that was what we were there for. I would definately recommend this ranch for those who can or cannot ride. I asked if I could have a different horse with a bit more go on my second ride and they gave me one. Remember to take bananas for the horses( they are given these at the end of the ride), sausages for the dogs and doughnuts for Joyce and the boys.
