Slickers de la Ciudad
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
Since the City Slickers movies of the early 90’s, Mel has dreamed of staying at a working dude ranch – learning to ride while living the cowboy life. (Surely this is coincidental to her ongoing attraction to men in cowboy hats and boots). What better place to experience this, than in Northern Argentina, home of the Argentinian cowboy, the gaucho?
We are spending the weekend at Sayta (www.sayta.com.ar), an authentic estancia (or dude ranch in North American terms). Sayta is about an hour’s drive from the city of Salta, which itself is a 22-hour bus ride (or 2.5 hour flight in the Brel world), from Buenos Aires. Our estancia is everything we could want and more – gauchos in chaps chewing coca leaves, random chickens and geese running about, legends and myths, a tobacco plantation and a pasture of gorgeous horses.
Our host, Enrique, is a hard-core gaucho – think Curly but with an incredible positive energy and spirit - the kind of guy who makes you instantly feel like you’ve been friends for years. His hosting style is one Brel can appreciate – bottomless glasses of wine, copious amounts of home-cooked food and a sense of humour second-to-none. Our lunches are cooked on a huge outdoor asado – endless, perfectly grilled meats arrive at our table for what seems like (and probably is) hours. Enrique goes to great effort to make sure we feel we are truly guests in his home. For dinner, we join him in his kitchen. We are served (and sometimes force-fed) beautiful Salteño wines until late into the night. In the afternoons, we join Enrique and his friends for mate.
Riding is obviously a big part of staying at Sayta – there are morning and afternoon rides, through trails, up streams or into the mountains. Our delicate bottoms, too accustomed to our recent life of leisure, protest after every ride.
We won’t soon forget our stay at Sayta. Enrique and his team have given us a welcomed sneak-peak into the world of the gaucho. Gracias!
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