Patagonian Grand Adventure

Day Three – 15 February 2014

Weather: Cloudy, some drizzle, 15-21

I was up at 6:30 and despite the urge to sleep in, I knew I had to be up at the next morning. One nice thing about having the four day itinerary ahead of time, I could plan laundry nights and other stuff ahead of time. Or in this case, laundry morning.

So, today was Cowboy Day and it was more about life on the ranch than scenery.

The breakfast was fairly rudimentary but it had these interesting little hot pizza pastries. While at breakfast, I learned some others had lost a lot of sleep when there was a fight on the main street halfway through the night. Some people though they heard a gunshot but that was never confirmed. The police got involved and cleared it all up. Those of us with interior rooms may not have had a view, but we didn’t hear a thing.

We were on the bus for nine and off to the Be My Guest lunch at a local ranch. The itinerary listed in the brochure mentioned a horseback ride but Marcelo didn’t know anything about that. (I find there are sometimes small differences in the advertised itinerary and the actual tour when a tour is contracted out to local companies. It’s to be expected and the small print will note that there can be changes, so I’d advise one not to take a particular tour based solely on one event. If it gets cancelled, you’ll spend the whole tour grumpy and miss out on some other fabulous experiences).

The drive to the ranch took about ninety minutes but included a twenty minute photo stop. The clouds were low but the scenery was still pretty cool.

The ranch was located in the drier area east of Bariloche called the Steppes. This area is about eleven million years old – much older than the Andes and reminded me a little of Wyoming.

Rachel told us that there were no llamas or alpacas in Patagonia except for their relative, the guanaco.

She said there are condors in the area as well but the low winds meant they would likely not be airborne. She said that since the condor eats everything including the bones, their poop is white and you can see where they nest cause the rocks below are white. We also spotted a white breasted eagle.

We arrived at the ranch after about an hour drive.

And the lack of horses (there were only two) was the first indication that a horse ride was likely never in the cards. (As it turns out, the cowboys were out for the summer, so they had all the horses). I wasn’t going to ride but I was happy to get pics of the horses.

We went inside the dining area and met our host, Martin. His English was very good and he even had an American accent. Sure enough, he spent his first eight years in California, and boy, could we hear the accent.

He gave us a brief history of the ranch. It was the first to be completely fenced, which was quite a feat given that it was seventy thousand acres. They raise sheep and cattle and are one of the few that still do today. Other ranches are shifting to eco-tourism given that water is becoming scarce. This ranch once offered river rafting but the river is gone now.

The ranch has six thousand sheep and six hundred cows. However, it used to have seventeen thousand sheep and sixteen hundred cows. Then a volcano erupted (actually, it was the Cordón Caulle Fissure) on 4 June 2011. The ash covered the area in and around Bariloche.

This was a big problem for wildlife and livestock. The ash caused ulcers in the eyes of sheep, and when the animal goes blind, it stops eating and starves. Also, the ash was eaten with the grass, and this not only ground down their teeth much faster, it turned to concrete in their stomachs. This was also a big problem for the red deer population.

The ranch was able to move six thousand sheep to another farm eight hundred kilometres away and moved a thousand head of cattle to a ranch closer to Buenos Aires. Since foot and mouth disease isn’t present in Bariloche, the cattle were not permitted to return and were sold from that location. The ranch is slowly recovering.

Martin tells us that the sheep are sheared in September and all six thousand can be done in less than two weeks by professional shearers. There are seventy gauchos working on the ranch. Their work was primarily to care for the animals and prevent poaching. Martin said they are a solitary type who like to go off for long periods and live off the land. He said they’re not very sociable, so we likely wouldn’t meet any outside of the two helping with the lunch.

The cook was a member of a family that has been at the ranch for more than a hundred years. He lived there with his wife and daughter, and the ranch owner (who recently passed away), had ensured that all the children of the gauchos were given a full education and health care. The ranch owner’s wife now takes care of the daily affairs of the ranch.

While he did his talk, we got some Argentine tea and deep fried bread (which we call toutons at home).

After the snack, Martin took us for a short walk. He showed us the ash on the ground which looks and feels like sand.

The cat treated it as his very own giant litterbox.

Martin led us around the hill behind the ranch, and we just stopped to enjoy the scenery. He asked us to have a minute of silence so that we could enjoy the view and listen to “nothing.”

Complete silence.

Well, except for the camera clicking somewhere behind me.

Yup. There’s one in every group. 🙂

We walked back to the ranch for an Argentine horse saddling demonstration. He had the gaucho show how they put on layers of wool and then a rudimentary saddle with a sheep hide on top and then a cinch.

Pretty nifty demonstration. The horse even had a cool buzz cut.

After the demo, it was lunch time.

Or should I say, time for the feast.

It started with bread, sliced potato, salad and the most delicious sausage. The woman across from me was a gluten free vegetarian and she got a rice cake with a slice of tomato on top.

Pretty cute actually and not an indication of what was to come. They took the lamb off the fire and sliced it up and served that and then served the beef and chicken.

I don’t think I’ve eaten so much meat in one sitting. It was delicious. Those who ate the lamb loved it. They finished up with fruit salad – kiwi, banana and apple. I ate it just to add some fibre to it all. We even got a scroll to commemorate the lunch.

After the feast, the gaucho manager gave us a talk on the hunting traditions on the ranch, primarily for red deer and wild boar. Martin translated for us as the manager explained it all. In the case of the red deer, the park allowed the ranchers to hunt them because of overpopulation and they’re a bit of a pest that has no natural predators.

I recall New Zealand learning the same lesson.

The problem they are having is that one male usually has a harem of four to six females but now with so many females, the number is up to eight to twelve. The manager said that the male “services” the first six.

However, when he gets to number seven, the sperm is so diluted that it leads to low testosterone and calcium levels in the young deer. This leads to a condition that affects the antlers by making them as sharp as knives. These deer are called assassins because when they compete with other males for dominance over a harem, the assassin can often kill the other male with the sharp antlers. In the end, the assassin can end up with huge harems simply because the males were all killed. This just makes the problem worse.

Currently, the hunt for females is year round and males are hunted in March and April when the females are in heat. There is even a push on to put a bounty on the assassins to help stabilize the populations.

To make matters even worse, the volcanic eruption occurred in June when the females were pregnant. So they not only had to deal with the ash turning into concrete in their stomachs, it lead to a fluoride deficiency so that the young were born with malformed teeth and many starved.

We finished up what I think was the the longest Be My Guest Lunch I’ve ever enjoyed. It was a great learning experience. We got back on board the bus for our hour long drive back to Bariloche where we headed for…you guessed it….the Chocolate Museum.

The museum was part of the Havanna factory where they make their chocolate. Our guide gave us a brief tour describing how the chocolate was created from the cocoa plant which bears a fruit containing 30-50 cocoa seeds. These are usually dried and roasted then milled. Different cultures refined the chocolate different ways with the Aztecs, for example, using it as an energy drink for warriors.

Nowadays, that’s called Red Bull.

We were given a sample of the hot cocoa and whoa! After that feast, it was like having a chocolate expresso.

Delicious.

When the tour was done, we got to visit the shop (of course). I saw mint and white chocolate and picked it up. (We got a discount for doing the tour).

By now, the group was exhausted. A big meal can really make one want a nap but I resolved to go back to my room, drop my stuff and go back to the shopping area just to walk around and burn off some of it.

We were back at the hotel by 4:30 and I was out by five. I walked the street and city centre till about 6:30.

Tomorrow promised to be “off the bus, on the boat, off the boat, on the bus” Day as we have to proceed through a series of three lakes to get to Puerto Varas. It was scheduled to be a 13 hour day.