We spent two nights at the estancia. From when you check in to when you are leave, you are welcomed with beautiful bird sounds and miles and miles of farm land. The estancia was built in the late 1800’s by an Italian. It was bought in the 1930’s and has been in the family ever since. In the early 1990’s, they decided to be one of the first estancia’s to welcome tourists in Argentina.

You are welcomed by about 10 dogs, shown around and given some empanadas. There are so many dogs that I always feel like there is a dog I haven’t seen yet. They serve lunch around 1:30 in a traditional Argentian asado (or bbq), served by gauchos. I thought I should try every meat for the first lunch and that was a mistake. I was so full from lunch. After lunch, they do some folk music and dances. They offer the guests two hour and half horse rides everyday, one in the morning and one after the dances. The night is capped off with dinner around 8. I was very full the first day so I learned how to pace myself the second day.

I was able to ride horses in the morning and afternoon today. The rides were led by the gauchos. The first horse I had was very content to just follow the pack as long as we were in the back. The second horse I had was complete opposite and had to be in the front. Both were nice horses but I can now say that I’m sore after 3 hours of horse riding. It has been so fun seeing so many different birds here. They have over 30 different species of birds here. My favorite is the pretty green bird that reminds me of a parrot. They are all too quick to get a picture of though.

After two nights in Buenos Aires, we had a driver take us an hour and half to an estancia. Estancia is a large ranch. We are staying at estancia that is still a working ranch with different crops, cattle, sheep and chickens. They also have 70 horses that roam the pastures.

The drive was pretty easy since we just got to enjoy the scenery. I was very happy that on the way out of Buenos Aires, it took us by where one of the major soccer teams in Argentina plays (River Plate). I just had to get a picture from as we drove by 🙂

The rest of the ride was mainly farm land. The last 3 miles is down a dirt road that was very bumpy. When it rains, they have a hard time accessing the estancia. After it rains, they need to use special trucks to get the guests in and out. On this day, we did not need one.

I could look at trees for a long time in Buenos Aires. I think I have more pictures of a single tree that probably anything else. They are called rubber trees or Gomero in Spanish. They grow up and then the branches will naturally reach for the ground and then keep growing up. They don’t need support but they have added support in places so they can still use space in the parks.

I have also noticed how much they care for their dogs here. There are plenty of dog parks and dog walkers around. I haven’t seen any stray dogs. Here are some miscellaneous pictures for our tour today. When we were at one plaza, they were raising the flag and opening the memorial for all of the lives lost during the Malvinas war (Falkland Islands). (They don’t refer to the islands as Falkland in Argentina.). A couple was also doing the tango in the middle of a park.

Our tour ended at the La Recoleta Cemetery which contains over 4,000 vaults. The cemetery is built like a city in that it is contains rows of vaults and tree lined walk ways. It contains some graves of Argentina’s notable people including a past president. Most of the vaults were very well taken care of but some could use a lot of work. The cemetery is often named one of the best in the world and it was definitely worth seeing. A lot of the material that was used in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were materials from Italy and France.

I have to keep reminding myself that I’m in South America and not Europe. We did a walking tour of Buenos Aires and a lot of their buildings are very similar to what you would see in Europe. We only saw a fraction of Buenos Aires but I was very impressed by how walkable the city was. Our tour guide was very good and spoke perfect English. There was about 50 people in our group which I think would be hard to keep everyone together. Especially when you try crossing the worlds widest avenue in the world. At one point we crossed 20 lanes of traffic. They say it is hard to make it all the way across at one time so you do have to wait awhile for lights to change again.

We learned a lot about Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and the war between Argentina and UK. The guide also taught us about the history of Argentina and how their currency is fluctuating a lot right now.

Since they have a lot of European influence here, there is a lot of pizza and pasta. Italians were actually the largest group of immigrants here from Europe after World War II. The walking tour was around 3 and half hours, however it wasn’t really spent walking as much as listening to a lot of information.