by admin | Jun 30, 2017 | La Pampa
This is the most complete Responsible Gaucho Tour in the Pampas of Buenos Aires
– Get involved and connected with the origins of the Pampas and its Gauchos.
– Discover the oldest Argentine traditions in rural labors, social activities, local food, arts and handicrafts, and support the people who keep them alive.
Description:
– Only 90 minutes away from Buenos Aires City, you will find one of the prettiest towns in the Pampas: San Antonio de Areco . A 280-year-old historical town, known as the “Cradle of Gaucho’s Traditions”.
– Experience the culture, the way of life and the characters of the Argentine farmlands, in a town that is deeply proud of preserving their traditions.
– Meet the people who practice, teach and keep our original culture alive: they use horses daily, they manufacture native handicrafts and cultivate our authentic folklore music and dance.
– Help us support the main characters of this small town that, despite the issues of modern life, they preserve their original traditions with great devotion and commitment.
The Responsible Gaucho Tour
Activities of the Responsible Gaucho Tour Areco:
– Visit to a Community program Center
– Visit to the workshop of a native Artisan of silver and leather
– Visit to a 160-year-old gauchos´ bar (Pulpería)
– Talk at a gaucho painter’s atelier
– Lunch at a local typical restaurant
– Guided tour through historical neighborhood
– Visit to an old-fashioned self-sustaining gauchos´ farm
Visit to a local Association which promotes and give jobs opportunities to special people.
It´s an association where young and adult people with different abilities produce in a handmade way “alpargatas”: typical gaucho shoes used in the countryside… very casual and comfortable shoes!
This factory is the only working opportunity this people could have in the town
This is the place where they can find a shelter, learn a technique, earn their own money through their efforts/work, and also socialize practice sports, learn theater.
Activity: During the visit, group members will visit the atelier and see how people work and how people can be inserted into society being & feeling useful.
This alpargatas shoes are the version of “Toms” a success in USA: http://www.toms.com its creator was awarded by Hillary Clinton.
Why this Responsible Gaucho Tour is considered fair and sustainable? Because through purchasing local goods (alpargatas shoes) and / or supporting with donations group guests will be helping to keep the business alive and employees to preserve their jobs.
Also in the Responsible Gaucho Tour: Visit to a typical countryside ranch
We won´t be visiting a typical touristic ranch in the Responsible Gaucho Tour. Just the opposite, we will visit a small ranch which survives thanks to the few animals they have: some horses, cows, sheep, hens and turkeys, all of them are used for the family own consumption.
– We will visit a real family living at this ranch.
– Family will open their home/ranch for guests and will share them the way they live, and invite them with a full lunch in a rustic and simple way, just the way they live.
– Why this visit is considered fair and sustainable? Because through this visit guests will be helping this family / supporting them economically so this people can preserve the place where they live and keep their traditions alive. Guests will have an unforgettable experience in a really authentic ranch.
The Tourism Areco Association
Social Responsible Gaucho Tour Areco: Camino Pampa has been always supporting and nurturing the sustainability of San Antonio de Areco as a tourism destination, and its cultural heritage in many ways:
Features of sustainability:
– It is locally based
– All the guides are locals from this town
– Has developed the only sustainable tour in Areco
– We contribute and promote these San Antonio de Areco´s Institutions:
o Apropdis: Social Community Center
o Conin San Antonio de Areco
o Asoc. de Amigos del Parque Criollo y Museo Ricardo Güiraldes
o Biblioteca Manuel Belgrano
o Asociación de Turismo de San Antonio de Areco
Apropdis
Conin San Antonio de Areco
If you would like to join us in this experience: Real Gaucho Tour contact
Some articles about Gaucho culture in Spanish: http://gauchoexperience.com/
by admin | May 11, 2017 | Estancias Buenos Aires, La Pampa
Gauchos in Buenos Aires by Tinker: When the writers in Argentina turned to their own land tour for inspiration, it was inevitable that they should choose the gaucho for their theme.
The most logical explanation of the etymology of the word is that comes from the Quichua or Aimará word “huajcho”, meaning an orphan or poor person.
In this cattle producing areas the gauchos played a romantic and often heroic part.
The men, mind and manners of the gauchos in Buenos Aires according to Tinker:
On the broad pampas (Quichua word meaning space) roamed unnumbered wild cattle and horses, descendants of those brought over by the early Conquistadores.
They were the country’s greatest source of wealth, and were so numerous that the law permitted any one to round up in an Estancia and brand up to 12,000 head in a tour.
If they wanted more, they had to get a special permit from the Buenos Aires governor.
This gave rise to a body of fearless riders, called gauchos, who made a business of hunting wild cattle for their hides and tallow, or of driving them to estancias to be marked and gentled.
Thus it was that, unlike the North American cowboy, who followed civilization, the gaucho preceded it and helped to make it possible by garnering the natural resources and protecting the frontiers against the Indians.
Huge expeditions were organized for this tour of huntings, with as many as a thousand head of saddle horses and great convoys of lumbering two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen.
Once in sight of a herd in the pampa, the gauchos in Buenos Aires galloped on horseback after them and hamstrung as many as possible with their big knives, called facones, or with medialunas, long bamboo spears shod with crescents of sharpened steel.
It was no trick for eighteen or twenty horsemen gauchos to maim seven or eight hundred animals in an hour.
by Edward Larocque Tinker: Reference in Wikipedia
More information about Gaucho culture: The Gaucho Experience
by admin | Oct 27, 2016 | Areco History, Traditions
Juan Jose Draghi silversmith: Born in San Antonio de Areco, from a family of farmers in the province of Buenos Aires. Inspired by a strong vocational impulse, and generating a great technical command of the trade learned solely through experience, intuition, and a creative genius that earned him prestige as the re-discoverer of traditional Argentina silverwork.
His Draghi silversmith concerns and unique ability to handle the chisel led him to be in 1971, one of the 38 craftsmen present in the first week of Crafts Exposition in San Antonio de Areco.
Draghi silversmith piece of work
History of Silversmithing in Argentina:
Midway through the 20th century, silverwork in Argentina was losing its essence, as well as one of its most important qualities: its identity.
Industrialization stripped the works of their unique character, just as it did to so many other trades, substituting individual craft with the generic printing techniques of mass production.
Silversmith description
Ricardo Güiraldes from San Antonio de Areco took the journey of preserving the gaucho spirit of the epoch intact-embodied in his immortal Don Segundo Sombra acclaimed book: the most important novel about gauchos.
His work demands commitment to the preservation of the estate of noble traditions passed from generation to generation.
Juan Jose Draghi silversmith
Therefore it’s not by chance that Juan José Draghi silversmith, devoted advocate of these values, always speak out loud: “I became a silversmith because I was born in Areco.” In San Antonio de Areco he found the source of inspiration to develop his work and start with tenacity upon a self-taught path.
He undertook a profound study on national fashions and customs, and inspired himself by trying to re-create the classic pieces on exhibition in the Ricardo Güiraldes Museum of the Gaucho, and wear by real gauchos in the Estancias.
Draghi workshop
The handicrafts of Juan Jose Draghi silversmith are today spread out in a tour throughout the world. Many of them are very far away from Areco and Estancias, where they were conceived.
Juan José Draghi is faithful interpreter of the aesthetic personality characterized by the gaucho and its current expression, his contemporary equivalent.
Juan Jose Draghi silversmith was devoted to his principles, as well. Another loyalty that stand out.
Draghi silversmith in San Antonio de Areco
This silversmith that is important in San Antonio de Areco and Argentina, has received many awards and satisfactions of a different order. But we imagine that none can be so overtaken experienced as when he was handed the gifts to be given to the Kings of Spain, Don Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia. That “facón” sheathed silver and gold, and that “rastra”, must be the most admirable few garments created by Draghi silversmith
Draghi in San Antonio de Areco
Presidents of USA: Reagan and Bush; the Prince of Saudi Arabia, Turki and Saud Faisal Al Saud; Chancellor Hellmut Kohl of Germany, among other world figures, have presents in silver with the Draghi´s punch.
The flag bearer of the Argentina Army 1st Battalion Logistics and their escorts, will take forever pieces of work of this great Argentina silversmith.
Currently his sons are still nurturing this art: Juan Patricio and Mariano, whose pieces have been selected to represent Argentina craftworks in the United States and France for World Cup 1994.
Partially extracted from the website of Draghi Plateros Orfebres, and Comodoro Juan José Güiraldes letter from May 9th, 1994.
You have the opportunity of visiting this great Criollo silversmith workshop in San Antonio de Areco and many other artisans in this Full Day Tour to the Gaucho town Areco
Mas acerca de las tradiciones del gaucho en Español: Tradiciones en Tour de Estancia Buenos Aires y San Antonio de Areco
Bus tickets and Tours to San Antonio de Areco and Estancias near Buenos Aires
by admin | Oct 25, 2016 | Estancias Buenos Aires, La Pampa
Estancia Los Patricios in San Antonio de Areco:
The trees at Estancia Los Patricios in San Antonio de Areco incluye a wide variety of acacias. The huge garden in front of the house with the pool to one side has a one-hundred years old maple casting a deep shadow big enough to shelter 500 people at 50 tables for an open air “asado”.
It is owned by Maria Luisa de Bary de Brane and Hector Juan Brané Istueta Landajo, descendants of Basque and French arrived in Argentina in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to the family house where there are two big towers (one west and another east), a kind of stud with carriages and classic cars.
Swimming pool
The estancia in San Antonio de Areco is known for its beautiful house, main style home “pampeano colonial” and all its infrastructure, storehouses and stables. Its large park has century-old trees of great magnitude and variety of species.
History of Estancia Los Patricios
Héctor Juan Brané and Maria de Bary de Brané have been living in this pampa colonial style house for the past 36 years and have been taking in guests in a Estancia Tour for over 28 years.
Their children, following the family tradition, play polo. They had run a polo school and can even offer a wooden practice horse for beginners.
The park of the Estancia
Los Patricios is a 200 hectare estancia dedicated exclusively to farming.
In Estancia Los Patricios de Areco you will find an exclusive place where the old family house stand out from the rest.
The park has large centenaries trees and variety of species along the natural lake, providing an ideal spot in contact with typical nature of the pampa from province of Buenos Aires , Argentina
Main house of the Estancia Los Patricios
Full Day Tour to the Estancia Areco: In Los Patricios you can have an exclusive place with the necessary infrastructure and organization to serve large groups in a daytrip. The gastronomy includes cocktail reception and typical argentina asado.
There is a variety of activities like horseback riding, carriage ride, bikes and the swimming pool.
The place was visited by Literature Nobel Mario Vargas Llosa in 2011: he was received with a typical argentina asado, folkloric music, gaucho dances and demonstrations of gauchos skills on horseback.
An unique original tour can be taken in a private service to this Estancia in San Antonio de Areco: Full day tour to Areco Town and Estancia departing from Buenos Aires
by admin | Oct 10, 2016 | Areco History, Traditions
The Areco boliches : After the Parrillas (steak restaurant in Argentina), which we can find in a tour all around us in Buenos Aires, we should consider the “boliches” as a true reflection of the reality today: save by a few nostalgic old timers and their aged customers, their main support in these times.
(Experience the best Foodie Tour in Estancia Buenos Aires)
The small towns and gaucho villages in the pampa and possible the quieter, more traditional outer suburbs of Buenos Aires are hosting many of these boliches.
Bars and gauchos
Gastronomy in a Areco Boliches
They do not aspire to be more than modest suppliers of simple food, often offering no more than the days specials plus the possibility of preparing some short order (not always available) to their frequent patrons. In many cases they overlap with the parrillas (steakhouses) because they too have a simple grill to hand.
Bar and general store
If not a grill (Argentine barbecue), then a hotplate is a frequent alternative. The fare is very basic, being mainly stews and pasta, with a tour to basic desserts as cheese and membrillo (quince jam) or a flan.
They are the solution for local villagers or a peon working in an Estancia with a very limited budget.
Old gaucho bar
Drinks at a Gaucho bar:
Some boliches are providing some quite simple sandwiches or “picada” (like tapas in Spain) to their customers, just as a perfect excuse to have some drinks (normally cheap liquors) and wine meanwhile. If the customer do not end the whole bottle of wine, it is kept closed by the “bolichero” till next day when the patron will return for the rest.
Some of the normal drinks are quite basic liquors with a high density of alcohol: caña, grapa, ginebra, or “vermouth” like the very popular “fernet”. There is no room for scotch, cognac, etc.
The Fernet
The more ambitious aim a little higher with the objective of luring the truck trade tour on routes and major highways crossing Estancias all over Argentina. Truckers love to eat well and cheaply.
In San Antonio de Areco there are many areco boliches for the gauchos that remain as they were originally: Same decoration, furnitures and belonging to the same family.
Extracted from “El gaucho gourmet” by Derek Foster: Buy the book Gaucho Gourmet
One of the Areco Boliches
You can enjoy your own stews, picadas and fernet liquor while in one of these Tours in the Pampa Argentina and Estancias: Estancia and gaucho town San Antonio de Areco
For experiencing some sort of old gaucho pulperia bar try this: Day trip to the gaucho Town and Estancia
All the information of the Foodie Tour: find Restaurants en San Antonio de Areco, also Pizzerías y Empanadas en San Antonio de Areco
