South America Days 35 - 37

We had a half day drive, 270km, today to get to Los Potreros, an Anglo-Argentinian estancia to the east of the Andes nearby the beautiful hills of the Sierra de Cordoba where we camped for three nights.  On the way we stopped in the town of Jesus Maria for camp food shopping and lunch.  We arrived at the estancia mid afternoon and where greated by Kevin the owner, an Argentinian, educated in England with an English wife.  He is the forth generation of his family to run the estancia, a working ranch farming prized Aberdeen Angus cattle plus a few sheep and pigs for personal use.

Kevin part owns a small local vineyard so in the evening before dinner we had a wine tasting session of four of his wines, one white Torrontes (traditional Argentinian grape/wine) two reds and a dessert wine, much nicer than the Piattelli wine we previously tasted plus larger servings with top ups plus lots of cheese and biscuits.  We were all pretty merry afterwards!  The cook group finally served a late dinner then it was 'dress up' party time as it was Emily's 30th birthday - A very fun evening.

The next two days we were split into two groups for horse riding, morning and afternoon and got two great horse rides over the Estancia's hills on some beautiful Peruvian horses.  Kevin, an English guide Holly, plus two gaucho's accompanied us all.  On the second day riding both groups met for lunch at the cattle ranch, we were served lovely salads and empanadas cooked by the estancia cooks, then we all had a lassoing lesson.  Great fun, first practising lassoing a pole then trying to lasso some calves.  Some of the group managed it, some not, I won a bottle of champagne for being best lassoist, lassoing the pole twice and catching a calf straight away, Nigel's lassoing was less successful - no pole and no calf!

The second evening at the estancia a couple of gaucho's and staff arrived and entertained us with some traditional music, guitar playing.

The last evening a camp fire was lit and Kevin's cook team and gaucho's cooked us a traditional Argentinian BBQ with meat straight from the ranch, steak, sausages and chicken, they slaughter a heifer weekly during their busier summer tourist season which is just starting now. There was also plenty of free flowing wine again.  It was a fantastic three nights/days at the Estancia and it was nice to stay put for a few days, we feel we've spent a lot of time on the truck just travelling and not really doing anything just recently.