“It had better rain soon… even just a little. The situation is critical. Not a drop of water is coming in to irrigate the vineyards. And the cattle are getting dangerously thin.”
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Today, Bill’s eldest son, Will, continues the story he started last weekend about a trip to Gualfin that nearly killed him…
… and about the exciting experiment that resulted.
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Today, Bill’s eldest son, Will, tells us about a trip to the family ranch in Argentina that nearly killed him…
…but which proved to be very fruitful indeed!
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Now that our nine-month quarantine is coming to an end – on Wednesday – we look back and wonder: Where did the time go?
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A procession for Santa Rita… a cowboy gets thrown from a mule… we are stalked by a puma… and go dancing with the stars…
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Almost all the farms in the area have a church, and on the hill behind the house, we too have begun building a tiny, family chapel.
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Our adversaries are entrenched in two high valleys. In the Quebrada Grande are four farms… occupied by local families with deep roots in the area. That is where the local activist, Maria La Gorda (Fat Mary) lives.
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We are ill-suited to war… But our “war” with the originarios goes on.
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It’s mid-spring. And we’re still here – in Northwest Argentina – with a quarantine tighter than ever. The Argentines have used the toughest “lockdown” approach in the world.
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When we left you yesterday, we were describing our trip out beyond the Apacheta mountains.
Improbably, there is an oasis far out in the bleak and barren mountains behind us.
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Was she still there? Was anyone there? Had it been turned into a hippie colony? Or abandoned altogether?
On Sunday, we went to find out. And we pass along this recollection of our expedition while it is still fresh in our mind.
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There’s a war going on here. It’s between the landowners and some “native American activists” – the Originarios – who’ve invented a lost tribe of Indians… and claim to be taking back their ancestral lands.
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Last weekend, we took our usual Sunday ride.
Usually, we go on horseback, exploring some part of the ranch that we don’t know well yet. Up into the mountains we ride… along the river… searching for an inaccessible mesa… or Indian ruins – there’s a lot to discover…
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When we got on the plane to Salta, Argentina, on March 12, 2020, we only intended to stay a few weeks…
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Come with me on a journey 5,000 miles away… to a land where campfires burn late into the night as cowboys doze off under the stars…
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We are blessed by having to wait out the coronavirus here in Argentina. We didn’t plan it. But that’s the way it has worked out… And it gives us a chance to look more closely at how you can destroy an economy with government policy.
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“The whole province is locked down again,” said the friendly policewoman on Saturday. “No internal travel without permission.”
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“You better come look at this,” said Elizabeth…
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Our office window looks out on the pasture. Yesterday, there were 120 cows in the field. This morning, none.
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An Argentine saddle is not like the western, American version. It is not a simple, one-piece statement, but more like a compound sentence, with dependent clauses and several modifiers…
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