Real cowboys wear berets

Saturday was an early start for us as we headed out to the largest gaucho festival in Argentina – Día de la Tradición.  It is two hours out of BA by omnibus (huge double decker coaches), and is located in San Antonio de Areco.  We needed to be at the bus station at 7am, and felt very old as all the other taxis were full with the locals just heading home from their Friday night!  The festival promised a day of gauchos, horses and asados (BBQ).  We arrived really early due to the timing of the bus, and spent the morning checking out the town and drinking bad coffee.  It was pretty rural, with old colonial style buildings and big wide dusty streets, but not too much else really.  A tumbleweed rolling down the street wouldn’t have felt out of place. After a big steak lunch by the river, we headed over to the festival.  We have never seen so many horses.  There were more horses than people, by at least a factor of ten.  They (the horses) all seemed to self regulate and even though they weren’t tied up, still hung out in herds arranged by the colour of their hair – no mingling for them!  Not sure what I was expecting in terms of the gauchos, but the traditional dress of a colourful jaunty beret, waist tied sash, and long knife, tucked in to the back of their trousers was a bit of a surprise.  Interestingly while some do wear lovely long leather boots, it is far more popular to wear simple alpargatas.  Back home more recognisable as Toms shoes!  Yes, those comfy American slip on canvas shoes were actually inspired by Argentine farmers (and buying them has benefited many Argentinean children, so all good). The main event was breaking in the new horses (pretty much a rodeo), bucking bronco styles (some spectacular falls). They also compete at hurtling on horse toward a structure whereby en route pulling your knife out from your teeth to then spear a tiny gold ring.  Amazingly many of them were successful at this.  Unfortunately the weather was against us, and after a few hours a storm rolled in.  Crazy winds, thunder, lightening and bucketing rain.  This put an end to the festival and later planned street fiesta unfortunately.  We took refuge in the local gaucho bar, which was great as it was filled with all the gauchos, all telling tall tales and enjoying a few beers.  We were sat across from what we could only tell could be the local gaucho legend.  A gentleman I estimate at around seventy years of age, magnificently moustachioed and dressed in his finery. He sat at His Table of which he had a regular audience of people come to sit with him.  This is the picture left in the header – he even had a painted portrait on the wall above where he sat. Journey back to BA was rather delayed with all of the rain and flooding that this created, but all in all a successful visit.

Horse power v Horse power 🙂

Off to experience Dia de la Tradicion

The future riders

Getting the horses ready

Now THAT is a bbq

The traditional knife tucked in trousers

“Thread the needle” done at breakneck speed

Paul capturing the moment

Yeeha!

This is why the tickets were cheap, up in the Gods!

A night at the opera

We have kept busy with all sorts of activities, and can’t believe we have already been here for two weeks.  I’ll try to keep the usual quick bullet summary here:

• Saw guinea pigs out in the wild out at Puerto Madero in the ecological reserve.  Very cute little fat things.
• Paul is being a dedicated student and has been taking three lessons a week with his Spanish tutor Soledad (she is a lovely and friendly lady considering her name in English translates as Loneliness).  Confession time:  I only survived one lesson…. I hadn’t put in the time prior to arriving in BA as Paul had done, and I was just going to hold him back!  I can still expertly order a beer, ask for the bathroom and count to six (courtesy of The Offspring and ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’ – you all know the song) – and hope to pick up a bit more via osmosis during our travels. When we are out and about however, people don’t seem to accept that he is the Spanish speaker amongst us.  We have had a couple of instances when ordering and asking for directions, where the locals stop talking with Paul and look at me as if to say “ok enough is enough, lets put the Gringo out of his misery and speed this up” – to which I nod and smile, and Paul has to step in and say “ella no hable espanol solo aparece como este!” (translation:  She does not speak Spanish, only appears like this).  Very funny.
• Monday nights are an amazing percussion night out at this old warehouse which we hit up this week.  Thought we had Lady Gaga in our midsts, but alas when she took off her wigs and other disguises, she was just a local looking for attention.
• Tuesday was a night at the Opera (Theatro Colon – second largest opera house in Southern Hemisphere…was the biggest until those pesky Aussies built Sydney Opera House!).  It was sold out so we had the cheapest of cheap seats….so cheap that they weren’t even seats and we had to stand at the top of the theatre!  This is a popular thing to do, so we certainly weren’t alone.  Actually our view wasn’t too bad, and the production of Madame Butterfly was beautiful.
• Wednesday was then dinner at a strangers house!  A popular thing in BA are Closed Door Restaurants, which essentially means dinner at a chefs home.  We went to Casa Salt Shaker, which I would thoroughly recommend.  Once you secure your booking he sends you his address, and then when you arrive meet the other eight diners.  After welcome cocktail pleasantries, we sat at his large table and had him then serve us up a delicious five course meal with paired wines from Mendoza.

The sun is out in full force, 30 degrees right now and our swimming pool beckons.  Ciao P&L x