More horses please

Just a quick post as it's late and I'm tired (and it isn't even 11pm yet).

Today L and I went to San Antonio de Areco, a gaucho town two hours outside of BsAs. As I'm sure you know gauchos are the South American cowboys (some would say the original cowboys). They spend the summer farming cattle out on the plains of Argentina, preparing all that lovely beef for me to eat. However, traditionally, they have gathered in the winter in towns to sit out the winter doing normal human things (marrying, having children, drinking, telling stories etc.). Now don't be mislead, if you didn't know it was a gaucho town, you wouldn't know. The houses are made of brick, the roads are sealed, people have cars etc. The major difference seems to be that there are lots of horses. Every gaucho needs his horse (and they are 'he' - this is a traditional society) preferably more than one.

Of course, the owning, breeding, riding and care of horses is very important to this group of people and this is reflected in their traditions. Soon the gauchos will be heading back out onto the plains for cattle husbandry and this weekend they had a grand fair at which they planned to show their horses, have a rodeo and lots of singing and dancing. Dancing is seen here as a very masculine thing to be able to do (ladies, you know how you feel when you see a man who can dance well) and everyone from about the age of ten upwards learns and participates.

This is what L and I went for. It didn't work out quite the way we hoped but more on that later....