Needless to say we all arrived to Friday exhausted. A long week of community service, in another language, with misbehaving kids (both those in the comedores and of the stanford kind…they had been going out at night a lot!), then a tiring day of physical labor and an extremely intense and emotional soccer game that ended really late. Everyone (the FSD staff included) needed a step back and a break, and no better place to do it than in the home of the Argentina cowboy (gauchos) in San Antonio de Areco. A nice, slow country town far from everything and perfect to reflect, sleep and hang out with gauchos! Re gaucho che!
After a good nights rest on Friday, we got up at a decent hour and headed out to a day long of further lounging and recuperation of energy. We went to a ranch/estate outside the town of San Antonio, and began right away to attempt to fit into the gaucho life style….by going out horse back riding!
Or some of us did, and some peoples horses rode them and did whatever they wanted! Like stop for a snack!
Another group of riders, with their fearless gaucho leader!
Then we took a break from our stenous morning of lazy jaunts in the country side and had a drink and lounged around for a while.
Before an elegant lunch
After lunch, we all grabed a nice cup of tea or coffee to help the food go down easier and to digest a bit…while we watched a very interesting horse demonstration which did NOT help the food stay down. We all sat around on the group, with our little delicate tea cups in our hands and our jaws DROPPED OPEN…
Yes you are seeing that right….
Platonic love between man and horse….
And of COURSE we had to have a photo op afterwards, it was just too good to pass up! He was…something else. I will leave you to judge for yourself.
To finish off the afternoon, and maybe to forget a bit about what we had all just experienced….we danced off the lunch and distrubing visions with a little folklore!
And then one of the girls in the group, Taylor, who is a tap dance (and was a dolly at Stanford for those who know what that is) challanged one of the folklore dancers to a dance off, and she was pretty incredible given that she had never danced folklore before and was wearing someone elses shoes!
Despite the slightly jaring experience, which none of us even talked about while we were there…we all just watched it and kept quite, it was only later that night that we finally talked about it…the day over all was incredible. Relaxing, recoperating, rejuvenating, rewonderful! It was a very gaucho experience, relaxing in the country side, something that we all really needed.
Some real life gauchos in action
