Riding riding riding

After 4 weeks in Argentina and Chile, we decided to go for the true Gaucho experience and go for a sunset ride on horses, warming ourselves up for the 'Estancia' experience. The Andes on the one side, sunset over the lake on the other, in the center of it all: Stuart the cowboy. Gringo, my horse, was very pretty but somehow reminded me a little of the cows you get in Switzerland: orange-brown and white and not very high. I felt quite ok, till it started walking off in all directions going for its dinner and chewing grass like its swiss counterparts and then suddenly trotting off, me just helplessly wobbling on top.
The best was obviously our cowboy Stu, who admitted to the gaucho that it was his first time ever on a horse. The gaucho simple replied: 'Good, first time for your horse too.' Needless to say that the Bonanza tune was not sung for while.

The gaucho invited us to his home later, which we thought was quite a funky place with lots of torturing tools and animal skins hanging around. He proudly explained to us that he was working on a puma skin at the moment, which he has caught 20 km from his home. The smaller skin was the foetus of a cow that he had emptied and in which he was keeping tea and coffee. Lovely.
'Do you eat puma?' 'Yes, I eat puma, cow, horse, rabbit, guanaco, ostrich, wild cat,puma is good, but you have to cook it for a long time.' Stu' And quickly because it's so fast.'
The gaucho taught us how to catch an ostrich or a guanaco, which live around here, with a three-legged line with weights on them. He claims he tries to catch all animals to eat or to keep, but not women: 'impossible to train!' What a lovely guy, not surprising then that the ratio in El Calafate is 7 men to one woman.