Welcomed with traditional mate tea and warm baked bread, cakes & cheese at breakfast by Leo and his wife Mercedes, the day at the gaucho farm got off to a perfect start. Impressively, Pete got back in the saddle for the first time since the horse did the splits of him on the beach in Nicaragua. As the gaucho said, Pete and the horse were pretty happy together by the end of the day!
Nick, having moved to Salta a couple of years back from London, seemed seriously at home with the gaucho lifestyle and swapped a day at his B&B for the day on the ranch. We did a great tour of the farm, through tobacco fields, over lots of rivers, through old archaeological sites and did plenty of galloping over the open fields. Being winter, it hasn't rained for about 6 months so it was pretty dry and all the fields were being ploughed ready to get planting tobacco - shipped out to big cigarette companies like Philip Morris!
Check out the size of the cactus in the picture of the guys. This mighty cacti is called Calixto, after the famous gaucho who galloped for 9 days straight all the way from Salta to BA to tell them the Spanish had arrived in the city. Not suprisingly, legend has it he couldn't walk for 6 months after that!
Luckily we were only in the saddle for 3 hours, after which we were treated to vino tinto and a delicious rustic steak asado out in the sunshine. Now that is living...
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