Fifty million cows and a Gauchos’ sun streaked scar

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Outside the high rise bustle of Buenos Aires, the Pampas run for hundreds of miles in every direction. The endless flat plains have been essential to developing an integral portion of Argentine culture, for nearly every restaurant in the country serves some sort of beef oriented entre. Steak and wine are the key ingredients to a porteno’s diet. There are more cows in Argentina than there are people, over fifty million for Argentines are the second highest consumers of beef worldwide. Dotted throughout the pampas are numerous Estancias, working ranches that having been providing the nation with its beef for over three centuries.

My traveling companions and myself left Buenos Aires aiming to stay on an Estancia via a trip to Iguacu on the Brazilian border. We arrived in Corrientes early one morning after an overnight bus ride. Awaiting the arrival of our host we dodged the dozen or so stray dogs that called bus station home. They were for the most part fat and friendly, their dirty and matted tales wagged as they searched out scraps of food. Beyond the strays a few battered Fiats stood silent in the taxi lane, a driver casually flicked aside the remnants of a cigarette while despondently awaiting the arrival of a fair. The streets were dirty and lined by haggard walls decorated with sloppy graffiti.

Diego was everything one would imagine of an Estancia owner; worn jeans tucked into a pair of Buffalo hide boots, a button up shirt with top three or four undone, dark sunglasses and tussled hair. We left the stray dogs and dirty streets behind us in Diego’s Volkswagen pickup which was as much a representation of a cattle ranch as his own appearance; dust and dirt covered the sides while a dead bird had inadvertently made the front grill its final resting place.

Corrientes was a dirty provincial town compared to elegant Parisian architecture of Buenos Aires, leaving it behind we traveled down quiet country roads. We were far north of the capital, at least four hundred miles, where the pampas meld into the Parana and create a hybrid of grassy plains speckled with shallow lakes and marshes. The view was relaxing, pastures of tall grass separated by the occasion tree or pond. The towns we drove through were a blur, a few houses and maybe a gas station or grocery store. Jorge Luis Borges, (Argentina’s resident Hemingway) described the Pampas through the eyes of a German immigrant in El Sur (The South): he saw unplastered brick houses, long and angled, timelessly watching the trains go by; he saw the horsemen along the dirt roads; he saw the gullies and lagoons and ranches; he saw great luminous clouds that resembled marble, and all these things were accidental, casual, like dreams of the plain.

Arrival

The truck pulled from the highway, crossed through a gaited fence and came to rest on a green lawn situated in the courtyard of a U shaped building. Estancia don Joaquin is a series of buildings, the main one contains the guest quarters. Angie (Diego’s wife) inherited the property from her grandfather which has been in her family for over one hundred years. Only recently however did Diego and Angie move from Buenos Aires to put considerable work and funds into the Estancia in order to transform it from a working cattle ranch to one capable of accepting guests.

Our time on the Estancia was a blissful and much needed reprieve from the early morning and late nights we had till then been enduring. Angie and Diego made us feel as if we were long distant relatives returning for a visit. We ate our meals with them and the few other guests present. The steaks were from cattle raised among the Estancia’s pastures and the pasta was handmade.

The first day we lingered lazily among a group of reclining benches in the main courtyard, drinking wine and beer while watching huge dragon flies flurry about while a group of horses grazed slowly through ankle deep water. Lunch was served around a large dining table. I quickly consumed the entire filet set before me, it was the best steak I had yet had in a nation known for its steak. My mind began to muddle from too much white wine, the wrong beverage to attempt any sort of cooling off method. The guest sitting to my right, an austere woman of seasoned years and considerable wealth from Buenos Aires began to question us on the spending habits of Americans and the effects of loose banking and credit practices. At one point in her most expressive pretension she referred to a steak house we had visited as “complete rubbish”.

Each day we left the grounds of the Estancia via horseback for a few hours at a time. Angie led us through endless pastures of tall grass, delineated by a variety of trees. The horses cooled their legs as the trail led through a marsh where the water rose to their haunches.

We rode with the resident Gauchos as they went about their duties working with the eight hundred head of cattle owned by Angie and Diego. Argentina is a nation of immigrants, the majority of its population still relates to their European and mostly Italian heritage, forming an aberration among a continent of the Mestizo (the cultural blending of Europe and Native America). The one exception in Argentina are the Gauchos. They represent the nearly mythical cowboy of South America, a wild lawless existence on the fringes of society. They evolved a culture on to themselves comprised of the gente perdida or “lost children” who filtered out of the early cities on the River Plate. David Rock in his extensive history of Argentina describes the origins of the Gaucho:

These migrants were usually of the lowest social class of the city, escaped slaves or militia deserters who exchanged the confines of urban life for a primeval existence as outlaws. In the eighteenth century member of the group were known as vagos, or vagrants, changadores, or gauderios. Culturally, they were a hybrid mix of Indian, Spaniard, and African. To trap and kill the cattle from which they lived, they used the Indian boleadoras and Spanish hunting knives. They evolved a distinctive form of dress – bagged trousers, Spanish hats, and woven Indian shawls.

Our Gauchos whom we came to admire were true to the definition, Roque lassoed and rode down calves with his wolf hound Bicho by his side, Juan and Tito spoke in their native Guaraní tongue, a smattering of subdued vocalizations. The tanned skin of Tito’s jaw was beset by a scar, I imagined its origin as something akin to the climactic knife fight in Borges’ story that led to the demise of the German Immigrant at the hands of a Gaucho, however his gentle demeanor and constant smile belied any bit of my musings. The apex of enjoyment to our involvement with the Gauchos was sitting with Adrian (my traveling companion), Tito and Juan as we broke from riding. We drank cold beer with our backs to a massive eucalyptus and a shallow lake at our feet. The sky was as wide as ever could be, crossed by defuse wisps of thinning clouds, the horizon lacked any semblance of humanity, only the endless flat of green pastures speckled by copses of tall spindly trees and wandering cows. Finishing the beer, we searched for an elusive caiman that retreated into the water every time we approached.

Spending an afternoon on the Estancia’s rear patio, we drank Malbec and watched a blanket of storm clouds envelope the vanishing blue. Roque used the outdoor grill to prepare us chorizo sausage and lomo cuts of beef. The lomo was red and warm, a hearty taste that could only be the result of free range cattle. Our wives received a lesson in homemade pasta making as the sky roiled with massive thunderheads. That night the horizon was set ablaze by an endless series of lightning strikes. We watched from the reclining benches, as every minute three to four bolts preceded a blast of exploding thunder.

Departure

Jose and Michaela arrived the date before our own departure. They were kindred travelers from Germany, she on her third visit to Don Joaquin. After enjoying our final steak dinner where our jovial conversation shifted form from English to Spanish to German and back again we entreated the pair for a sample of their Tango skills. Tango is much a part of Argentine culture as is football. Jose and Michaela happened to be professionals who had met on a previous trip. They humbly obliged our incessant pleadings and melded into a single entity as the music provided an audible silhouette to a series of graceful moves and sensual headings.

An hour later we hugged Diego and Angie goodbye and settled into a cama seat (essentially a bed) on a bus heading back to Buenos Aires. Stretching muscles sore from riding I eventually fell asleep to the rhythmic swaying of the bus’s movement as we left Don Joaquin behind.

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