La Querencia

How's everybody doing?  Things around here have been kind of slow I guess.  Our 2 week midterm period ends Friday, so we've all just been hanging out and studying a bit and going out a bunch at night.  My friends and I are taking the first week of classes after midterms off to go on a nice long trip to Patagonia.  Its going to be 10 days starting way down south in Calafate heading north up through Chalten, Bariloche, Villa Angostura, and San Martin de los Andes.  Look up Calafate on Google maps, its really far down there, almost at La Tierra del Fuego.  To everybody's pleasure and my partial dismay, the trip promises a ton of blog posting (also known as "lunch break literature" at Groner Service), so I figure I better catch up before I have new stories.

After returning from Mendoza on Monday morning, Dave, Max, and I crammed in a few quick classes and a nap or two before heading back off into the country again.  A friend of ours named Bel came over back in March with her other friends named Bel (the former known as Belen and the latter as Belu) and Clara.  Belu invited us to her campo (the Argentine word for estate/farm/massive property) named La Querencia near a little town about 5 hours away called Arias on the border of the Cordoba and Santa Fe provinces.  We all took a bus up to Arias late Thursday night, arriving at about 5am.  As Belu drove from the bus station to the house in the dark we couldn't really tell what the campo looked like or how big it was.  When we woke up later in the day around 10, we got our first glimpse of it.


Belu told us the whole thing was 2000 hectares.  For those of you who are bad at math or have no idea what a hectare is, that's almost 5000 acres, or 7.72 square miles.  For those of you who would like a geographical comparison, that's one-third the size of Manhattan, or 235.35 times bigger than Aunt Suzy and Uncle Eric's piece of sod.  It's massive.  If you look at my pictures of our weekend, there is not a single picture that shows any other land in it other than her family's, even the ones where the horizon looks a million miles away.


There is a big old mansion in the middle of the property where some of her family members live.  There are other houses and buildings and structures scattered about the property where workers live or where tools/grain/things are kept as well.  Around the mansion there is a garage, big windmill, tennis court, picnic area, and tons of grass.  There's also a fenced off farm where horses and cows are kept.  Its really a cool place.  There's also a couple of dogs living around the farm, two of which stayed with us the whole weekend.  One is an adorable beagle named Holly and the other was a black lab.  We didn't know the lab's name so we called him Negro (not the American word negro, but negro as in the Spanish word for black).


On Friday we had breakfast in the big dining room (there's a lady or two that comes everyday to cook for everybody) and then went to play some tennis.  We took a break and had lunch on the back patio overlooking the huge lawn and a ton of farmland where they grow soy and corn.  We enjoyed the perfect weather and serenity and got our minds off of this stressful life we're living for a bit, it was great.  After lunch we played a little bit more tennis as a farm hand rounded up some horses for us.


We got changed into some gaucho clothes (one of my tshirts, some super comfy horse riding pants, and a cool hat i found) then headed over to help saddle up the horses.  I had never truly ridden a horse before, so the gigantic masses of muscle scared the crap out of me.  As I stood back afraid of walking near them for fear of being kicked or something, our experienced gaucho Max went to work with the farmhand.  For those of you who don't know, Max is our French/American friend who goes to school at Tufts in Boston.  He worked as an actual gaucho on an even bigger farm in Uruguay for like 6 weeks before coming to Buenos Aires, so he did really know what he was doing.


Eventually the horses were ready and we all hopped on.  We got 15 seconds worth of instruction on how to "control" the horse, and everybody started going.  I was in a near panic, so when they told me to kick it to get it to walk, I hesitated just a bit.  The guy smacked its butt and it started off.  It was super uncomfortable and I had no idea what I was doing, so everybody just walked slowly for about 15 minutes.  Max, Belu, and Dave got impatient and started running around the fields a bit.  Eventually I worked up some courage and gave my horse another kick.  It went into a trot, and I bounced up and down, hanging onto the reigns for dear life, as my butt and adjoined parts were smashed flat.  The group continued on (probably for a couple of miles) until we reached a big reservoir.  We rested there for a bit and watched the little beagle Holly bound through the grass that was a foot taller than her (she actually stayed with us the entire time on the 3 hour ride).


We started heading back by going the long way around the property.  Max eventually pressured me into trying a semi-gallop or gallop if I had the courage.  I got some decent speed, but was really scared so I stopped.  I practiced a few more times, and eventually Max and I reached a long straight strip of grass mowed through the field.  The horses know the property pretty well, so they knew we were heading back and started becoming hard to control because they wanted to go home.  Max took off down the strip at full speed and my horse immediately followed, without even warning me.  I actually hit a full sprint!  It was so cool to feel the horse running and breathing heavy underneath me as he just tore through the field.


Eventually we got back, unsaddled the horses, hosed them off, and brought them back to their field.  The saddle and 185lbs of person on their back must be pretty annoying because every single one of them immediately laid down, rolled onto their backs, and did that wiggle thing that dogs do to scratch their back.  It was really funny to see giant horses doing it.


We showered off, relaxed a bit, and had dinner.  Afterward we just sat around and relaxed some more on the back patio.  The nearest city is really far away, and the sky was absolutely filled with stars.  The air was crystal clear and it was super silent.  I haven't been that relaxed since Long Beach Island, which is saying something.


Saturday held more adventures, but its getting late, I need to study more, and my fingers are tired.  I'll finish up tomorrow.  Click the link above for pictures!!!


Oh, and one last thing- as much as I appreciate my mother's comments (thanks mom), I get tons of those without this blog.  I really would like to hear from the other people who are reading this (I would like to thank Tracy for her funny comments, and the one comment Aunt Carole left me).  I spend a ton of time doing this, and I always wonder who is actually reading it.  I leave Flat Evan pictures up all the time, and I never hear from my beloved Godfather or his rascal sons in New Jersey to know if they're getting the pictures.  Que frustrante!  Anyway, here's a quick guide on how to leave comments:


Step 1: At the end of each post, it says for example: Posted by Dan Alfano at 7:23 PM 0 comments.  Click the part where it says "0 comments" (not right here, but at the end of a post).

Step 2: It will take you to a screen that says "Post a comment" with a white box under it.  Write your comment in the box.  Then under the box it says "Comment as:", select "Anonymous" from the list.  Since you're posting anonymously I will have no idea who wrote the comment, so make sure you say who you are in the comment.  Hit "Post comment". 

Step 3: You will be taken to a similar screen.  Under the comment box it will say "Word verification."  Just copy the funny looking letters into the box below, and again it "Post comment."  You're done!  Thanks in advance for your thoughts!


Hasta luego.