by admin | Dec 2, 2019 | La Pampa
Unique and friendly Argentina cowboys
Customers` reviews on trip advisor talking about the Argentina Cowboys that they met at the Camino Pampa Tour.
Review of: “Mark B” September 7, 2017
Fantastic day that exceeded all of our expectations
First off, I highly recommend this tour and our guide Juan..
We were looking for a day away from BsAs to just enjoy and learn about life in Argentina outside the city and Argentina cowboys. We hoped to enjoy the outdoors and have a new experience.
Wow! What an amazing experience. We were staying in a flat in San Telmo and were met very early for nice drive out to San Antonio de Areco. Great conversation, many questions answered and context given to us that prepared us for the day made the drive fly by. We met our guide, Juan, in the town and he took us on a journey of history, culture and weaved in some terrific stories. He really helped us step in to another world.
San Antonio de Areco town of the Argentina cowboys:
The town was beautiful and the little chocolate shop, La Olla de Cobre, was amazing…the best Alfajores I have ever had. Then it was off to the Estancia. The Estancia was very beautiful and all the people we met welcomed us warmly and we felt truly blessed to be there.
Being from the US I had no idea how different the Gaucho lifestyle and relationship with their horses were from Cowboys in the north. Frankly, it was beautiful to see with demonstrations that highlighted the subtle but deep relationship that the Gaucho and horse maintain.
The horseback ride was very nice and relaxing which suited my daughter well on her first ever time in the saddle. We enjoyed a wonderful meal and rounded out the experience with demonstration of traditional dance and music.
Juan, José and Guillermo, thank you so much for making our holiday and leaving us with an experience we will never forget.
If you would like to take this Full Day tour Estancia near Buenos Aires with San Antonio de Areco Gaucho town visit.
The argentina cowboys at the Estancia
Review of: “SporeanGranTurism” February 24, 2015
A Different Perspective of Buenos Aires with the Argentina Cowboys
My wife and I selected this tour, because it offered not only an opportunity to visit an Argentine estancia with Argentina Cowboys to get a feel of life in the pampas, but also to visit a small provincial town. Overall, we were pleased with this experience, and would recommend taking this tour.
A driver named Jose Maria picked us up at our hotel in Buenos Aires at 8:30am. Along the way, he provided a near continuous commentary about various aspects of Argentine life and Argentina cowboys, particularly outside of Buenos Aires city centre, and in the pampas.
We had not expected this value added service, and it was much appreciated. Also, he was a skillful driver, and was very friendly and personable.
After a two-hour or less drive, we arrived at the town of San Antonio de Areco, and were greeted by a guide named Juan Manuel. He too had a wealth of information and stories to share with us, as we tour a traditional bar, a church, a traditional and a modern silversmith shops, and a chocolate confectionary shop, each of which reflected a specific aspect of the history of this town, particularly as a melting pot of immigrants from different countries.
Note that the silver jewellery in Patricio Draghi and the alfajores in La Olla de Cobre are good buys.
The Estancia in the Pampas
Afterwards we headed to the historic El Ombu de Areco estancia. By this time, we had become friends with Juan Manuel, who was very charming, on top of being an excellent guide. At this estancia, we had time to walk around and explore the estate manor and grounds, take a horseback or horse-drawn carriage ride around the pampas, have an ample and tasty lunch of Argentine BBQ specialties whilst being entertained by a bona fide gaucho performing traditional milonga music, and watch an amazing “horse whisperer” achieve complete control of his animal.
Along the way, we learnt how incorrect it was to define a gaucho as a cowboy, and what that culture truly entailed.
Afterwards, we exchanged contact details with Juan Manuel, bade him farewell, and headed back to Buenos Aires. Along the way, Jose Maria was kind enough to stop at a mini-market so that we could buy some water for use back in our hotel. At around 5pm, we arrived back at our hotel.
It was a day well spent.
If you would prefer more information about the Gauchos in Spanish
A day in the countryside where the gauchos are working every day in the Estancia
by admin | Oct 7, 2016 | La Pampa, Traditions
The gaucho pulperias in the pampa (popular name for a sort of bar or tavern) was the main place of reunion and entertainment for both rural gauchos and urban popular sectors until the close of the XIX century.
They were places where popular classes found possibilities to share the “freedom” to drink, to play, to negociate, to manifest their disagreement and express everything that was repressed by the stiff rules of social control during that period in Argentina.
Pulperias established within the confines of estancias, or accompanying troops on their way to the frontier in the pampa, acted as the fundamental venues for these bonds. They reinforced ties between “boss and peon” or among armed men.
The characteristics of the pampas inhabitants made this specific form of sociability unique even within traditional sociability. The instability of work, liiving arrangements, and forms of family life made it difficult to establish lasting bonds.
Gauchos at the old gaucho pulperias
Social reason for the gaucho pulperias
The weakness of social ties made the situation of the rural population more akin to that of the individual in modern society than to that faced by a member of colonial society in Buenos Aires. The type of egualitarian relationships that flourished in the pulperias was yet another characteristic that distinguished these social encounters from those found in a traditionally hierarchical society.
Moreover, since the pulperia was the only meeting place for an isolated and heterogeneous population of gauchos working in Estancias, it was not only a center for spreading the news – a necessary condition for any modern political culture – but also a place to sing folkloric songs and recite poetry, the cultural forms in which gauchos’ sorrows and joys were expressed.
In other words, it was a forum for “gaucho discourse,” instituted on the basis of the traditional sense of liberty and equality.
Extracted from: Revolution and Restoration: The Rearrangement of Power in Argentina, 1776-1860 edited by Mark D. Szuchman, Jonathan Charles Brown: This and some other related thoughts in: The gaucho experience
Todays gaucho pulperias
Travellers at a Gaucho Pulperias:
The pulperias in Argentina are the rendezvous of the gauchos, who set no value upon money, and spend it only in gambling and drinking. Their custom is to invite all present gauchos to drink with them; they have a large pitcher full of canespirit (for they dislike wine), which they pass round.
This ceremony they repeat so long as they have a penny left, and they consider it as an affront if any one declines the invitation.
Every pulperia nearby an Estancia is provided with a guitar, and whoever plays on it is treated at the expense of the company. These musicians of the pampa never sing any other than a continuous tour of yarabys, or Peruvian songs, which are the most monotonous and dismal in the world. The tone is lamentable, and they always turn upon a tour of disappointed love, and lovers deploring their pains in deserts; but never treat of lively, agreeable, or even indifferent subjects.
Some gauchos at the pulperias
After all, these gaucho pulperias in the pampa, miserable as they are, are not much inferior to some of the inns, as they are called, in Spain herself. It is very true, that in the larger post-towns improvements have been made of late years in the accommodations for travelers; but in other situations, where they are obliged to remain during perhaps the whole night after a long day trip, the buildings are literally nothing better than huts, or low public-houses frequented by the poorest peasantry: they sometimes do not consist of two stories, or even of two rooms, but a separation is made by a curtain, the harbour of all kinds of filth and vermin.
At the pulperia near Buenos Aires they are frequently provided with a guitar, but the performaces upon it are the most wretched that can be imagined.
Picturesque Illustrations of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video: By Emeric Essex Vidal
How you can visit a real pulperia:
For experiencing some sort of old gaucho pulperia bar try this: Day trip to the gaucho Town and Estancia
by admin | Sep 21, 2016 | La Pampa
The original pampa has loose, dark, well drained soils with a high percentage of organic matter.
It is the most fertile soil in the country, fitted for agriculture and the rearing of livestock.
Geography of the original pampa:
The fertile area of the pampa is more than half a million square kilometres. Its most important rivers are the Salado and the Colorado which marked the limits in the history of Spanish colonization.
“Immense plain, immense rivers, an uncertain horizon, always melted into the land between the cloudscape and flimsy vapours that do not allow, in a distant perspective, show the point where the land ends and the sky starts.” (Domingo F. Sarmiento).
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Birds in the Pampa
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The fertile pampa of Buenos Aires, the original desert, was formed thanks to the treading of immense herds of wild animals, the fertilization of its waste matter, and pasturage.
Estancias in the Pampa
When the big Argentine estancias started being established by the end of the seventeenth century in the original pampa, its settlers suffered the loneliness of the endless plain. Many years went by, until the desert was totally conquered and the pioneers could eventually get their reward.
The use of wire fencing was the next big step towards the creation of the modern Estancia. The wild and savage herds, protected by limitless freedom, were finally penned.
The inhabitant of the pampa, the itinerant gaucho, also saw in wire fencing the end of his freedom and of his infinite horizons, and it was then that this character turned into the myth and archetype he is now.
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Cows in the Pampa
In the wired fields, the wild livestock became tame and the estancieros (Argentine farmers) started crossing them with pedigree animals, especially those belonging to races brought from England.
It was then, that the cabañas (pedigree cattle breeding farms) were created. Here they devoted themselves to intensive breeding in the Estancia.
Not only were the cattle improved, the the fields started being carefully tended as well. They were sown with better fodder and were intensely prepared for cultivation.
In Argentina, cattle are still bred in the open and fed on natural grass.
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The original pampa
Immigrants in the original pampa:
In the twentieth century, when European immigrants arrived, the fields around the cities were subdivided in order to create smaller farms, called chacras, to cultivate cereals and vegetables.
The hardworking colonists and farmers were not Argentine but Italian, German, French, who worked with simple ploughs, had moved water pumps and home made winches.
(Mónica Gloria Hoss de le Comte)
There are many ways of experiencing the pampa Argentina: Camino Pampa Tours
Tourism in the Pampa: San Antonio de Areco
Departing from Buenos Aires everyday visit to the original Pampa: Estancia Tour
