Friday, March 21, 2014

In Hindsight and on to the Future

We celebrated Julio's 65th birthday with his family and friends.
Julio is taking the picture.
Believe it or not, but this shot is taken inside his stable.




In Hindsight and on to the Future

The horses are on the range for winter; our saddles have been stored, and I managed to wash the dust out of my riding clothes and eliminate the grime from under my fingernails. My screensaver is now a photo of Judy and me. (See below.) For our return trip to our guide Beto’s place at the end of February, Alex and I had three warm sunny days on our own to reminisce about our adventures. When we rode down the long hill into Beto’s a year ago, I felt triumphant as in We Did It. We Said We Would and We Did! This year, after we dismounted for the last time, we were full of stories about the people we’d met or reconnected with, and the sites, especially the Tigre Glacier, we’d seen. Instead of triumphant, however, we were simply sad that our days in the saddle were over for another year or more.

This is my screensaver.
Anyone who does any long distance riding will likely visit the website for the Long Distance Riders Guild, which is maintained by Americans CuChullaine and Basha O'Reilly. It is the go-to place for anyone contemplating an equestrian expedition, and CuChullaine is generous with his time and expertise. In reading accounts of other treks on horseback that appear on the site, we recognized that our trip was short by comparison. (A trip has to be over 1000 miles long to qualify as being long distance.) We also realized that our style of travel and perhaps our purpose for setting out in the first place didn’t necessarily conform with other equestrian adventurers.

Rather than start at point A determined to reach point B, as in a ride across America, we rode in circles. Then we went back this year and repeated parts of the same route, visiting many of the people we’d delighted in the year previously. We realized that just as there are travellers for whom the journey is more important than the destination – The Welsh author Gwyn Thomas, once said, “But the beauty is in the walking – we are betrayed by destinations.” – there are travellers like ourselves who like to dig down into the places they visit and get to know the landscape and its people.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up and have lived most of my life in a place defined by the lay of the land. I spent every summer day as a youngster swimming in Southern Ontario’s Credit River and many long winter afternoons skating on its frozen waters. I can trace the river’s journey from high in Dufferin County to Lake Ontario. The Niagara Escarpment, which wends its way from Tobermory in the far northwest corner of the province to Niagara Falls in the south, made its presence known in the backyard of my youth. The steep cliffs of the Forks of the Credit, the humpbacked Devil’s Pulpit on the skyline, the red Queenston shale claybanks were my home. Their spirit is buried deep in my psyche.

In an essay on travel writing called Home Truths on Abroad (the Guardian, September 19, 2009), seasoned travel writer and historian William Dalrymple discusses the genre of travel writing wondering if it has a future and if so, where it might lie. Rory Stewart, whom Dalrymple refers to as “probably the most highly regarded of the younger generation of travel writers,” figures prominently in the essay. Dalrymple writes, “Stewart is also sure that the kind of travel writing which will show the greatest durability is that where an informed observer roots and immerses himself in one place, commiting time to get to know a place and its languages.”

We stayed with Don Aviles again this year.
For 42 years he has spent the four summer months living with
his horses, dogs, cattle and sheep.
As someone who travels and writes, I recognize myself (and Alex) in this description. My desire is to discover the backstory. My natural tendency is to research the place and its people and tell their stories. The travel writing I like to read involves people who invest in a place, maybe build a house there or take a job. I take pleasure in getting inside another culture and its people. To know people’s names.




Paul Scott Mowrer, an American journalist, once wrote, “There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast.” What I’ve discovered from our travels over the past two years is that plodding along on a horse in a country that reveres its horses and horse culture has resulted in people throwing open doors that might otherwise have been slow to crack. Moreover, by returning to visit again and again, acquaintances have turned to friendships. In horses it seems, we found a common language. And from a saddle, where I am not burdened by keeping a bicycle in a straight line or tripping over a rock should I look up while hiking, there is time to see the cracks and crannies, study the plants, piece together the route of a river.

Dalrymple quotes Stewart once again, "In an age when journalism is becoming more and more etiolated (limp), when articles are becoming shorter and shorter, usually lacking all historical context, travel writing is one of the few venues to write with some complexity about an alien culture.”


I’m not there yet, not ready to write a travel book about Argentina, Patagonia or our horse travels. I still have too much to learn. But the culture of this wonderful country is unfolding in the lives and stories of the people we meet, in mountain peaks and crystal stream, and in the research I am compelled to undertake. As long as I keep coming back, keep digging deeper, a book will appear.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Behind Every Good Story in Cholila is a Gun


Behind Every Good Story in Cholila is a Gun
"The going price to hire a killer in Cholila," our dinner companion tells us, "is 5000 Pesos (about $750)." We are learning that despite starting to feel comfortably at home in Cholila, there are some major cultural differences between what we know in Canada and what goes on in this corner of South America. Turns out it’s a lot more like the Wild West of vintage Western movies than we’d realized.
Over grilled chicken, stuffed pasta and a very good attempt at making Mexican tacos, complemented by a nice Malbec, we get the low down on Cholila. Our guest doesn't live in Cholila; he lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina's exquisite capital. But he was born in this part of Northern Patagonia and visits family here often. Before jumping into his tale of extortion, murder and corruption, he glances around the room to see if anyone else might speak English. Satisfied, he continues, though he avoids using anyone's name and suggests we do the same. This was our first clue that all was not as it seemed as we walked the small town's quiet streets nodding hello to a growing number of people whom we recognize. During siesta between 1pm and 5pm each day, nothing stirs.
He tells us in a matter-a-fact tone about the time someone hauled him out of his truck right in the middle of town. His attacker hurled him on to the pavement and then proceeded to hold a gun at his temple while accusing him of having an affair with his wife. Doing his best to remain calm, our friend tried to assure the crazed man that he had no idea what the guy was talking about. Our dinner guest said he wasn't having an affair with anyone. He managed to talk his attacker down, but it was a scary incident. It turned out, our friend had purchased his truck from the guilty party. The attacker had recorded the licence plate number so assumed the driver was the person who had been visiting his house when he was off working. And I thought the worst thing about buying a used car was the chance of picking up a lemon.
The story stretched our Canadian sensibilities, but was easy to believe given the pistol-packing campesinos. A typical gaucho, at least when he is in the saddle, is clad in bombatchas, baggy cotton pants that feature a cuff at the ankles; a roughly knitted chaleco or vest usually made from raw lamb's wool that has only received minimal processing so it's full of oil that helps it repell rain; black leather, mid-calf-length riding boots; and a boina or beret usually made of light-weight black felt, red cotton or a pattern of black and white wool. They also carry a revenke, which is a sort of wide leather riding whip that makes more sound than sting; a very sharp machete; and a pistol of some sort on their hip to "shoot jabali (vicious wild pigs with enormous tusks) or puma."
Firearm-related deaths in Argentina are on par with our gun-crazed neighbour to the south and four times what we experience in Canada. You need a licence to own one, but, to say the least, not everyone complies.
On a roll, our dinner guest tells us the disturbing story of his neighbour’s cousin. Seems he, let’s call him Juan, had a glorious place on the shores of a pristine lake not far from Cholila. A prime spot. Juan had to leave town for a time and left his nephew in charge of his place. During his absense, his nephew involved himself in a high-stakes poker game and lost -- $50,000. His only way to pay his debt was the deed to his uncle’s farm, which he turned over. Upon his return, Juan moved back into his house despite his nephew’s story. The next night in the soupy darkness of a moonless sky, the poker players came calling. Seeing Juan hadn’t vacated the place, they lit his car on fire leaving it there as a reminder. The following day, they returned dragging the burnt-out vehicle down the mountain depositing it in the middle of the road, maybe as a reminder to all.
Hoping this would be the end of the shenanagans, Juan stayed put, but the battle wasn’t over. The thugs were deadly serious. The next night they came back. This time their target was Juan’s house. In what we’ve now come to learn is not that uncommon a practice in these regions, they sprinkled fuel around the house and tossed in a match. In minutes, Juan’s wooden house was engulfed in flames. He escaped, but his home was destroyed. Juan fled and now lives far away.
But the new owner hadn’t finished inflicting his form of thuggery. This time, he aimed his wrath at Juan’s neighbours. He erected a fence across the road and refused to allow these neighbours who lived farther up the only road that accesses this back country to pass unless they paid him $60,000. According to our dinner guest, the three affected neighbours had no choice but to pay up and it wasn’t just because they needed road access; they knew what might befall them if they didn’t comply. When we asked how these campesinos came up with this much dough, our friend shrugged his shoulders. “The good thing,” he said, “is that he has only collected the fee once.” Since the events of about five years ago, the house is a burned out shell. A handfull of cows and sheep pick away at the bit of grass that pokes from beneath the crumbling foundation. A local campesino from Cholila looks after the animals. The thugs have never returned.
At the heart of our dinner guest's other revelation is the lack of effective land reform in Argentina. It seems that many campesinos don't have a title to their land. At best, they can live on it, but they can't sell it. This is the case with at least part of the land that our guide Ivan Hueche has at the end of Lago Lezana. Our friend said, "If Ivan wasn't the popular guy he is, he'd likely be dead." Such are the battles the Hueche family has had in their efforts to secure title to their 300 hectares of highly valued land.
Our guide Ivan (Jabali) Hueche tackles a wild pig (Jabali). Our friend told us,
"If Ivan wasn't the popular guy he is, he'd likely be dead."
Then there is Sonia Perry's situation. Based on what our guest told us about Sonia, I decided to go meet  her and listen to her disturbing story first hand. It explained why there is an underlying tension to life in Cholila.
Anyone familiar with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, may know the name John Commodore Perry. In fact, those familiar with the lives of these infamous American train and bank robbers, especially anyone whose knowledge extends beyond what was presented in the 1969 Hollywood blockbuster, might even recognize the name Cholila since the duo, along with Sundance's girlfriend, the elusive Etta Page, bought land in Cholila after fleeing from the US and before being chased to Bolivia. The modest wooden cabin they built near the banks of the Rio Blanco still stands as do the outbuildings. We visited the place one day as it has been preserved, though there is nothing more than a hand-painted wooden sign marking the spot. When I asked who owned land, I learned it was the subject of a disagreement between the municipality and a private citizen.
The notorious bandits raised some 300 cattle, 1500 sheep and close to 30 saddle horses on what is a magnificient piece of land set at the base of the soaring Andes Mountains. On about 6000 hectares of land that Cassidy described in a letter written in 1902 to his friend Mrs. Davis in Utah, as "...good agricultural country, [with] all kinds of small grains and vegetables grown without irrigation," they led a quiet honest life and were reportedly well respected by their neighbours.
One of the people who lived nearby was John Commodore Perry, the great grandfather of Sonia Perry, who was a fellow American. By some accounts, John C Perry had been sent to Argentina to track down the outlaws, by others he happened to already live nearby. Even Sonia didn't know for certain what the truth was. But John C Perry, who had been the first Sherriff in Crockett County, Texas, certainly knew his neighbours and was aware of their past. In the accounts I read, John C Perry liked Cassidy and along with others was respectful of Sundance's skill with a gun and with horses. He was likely also taken with the lovely Etta Place, played in the movie by a young and demure Katherine Ross (no relation, I'm afraid).
Regardless of why he arrived in Cholila, John C Perry never left and by all accounts became a respected member of the community. He fought hard as Argentina and Chile battled it out over about where the border would lie between the two nations. HIs reputation within the community grew and generations of his descendents have benefitted from carrying the Perry name despite being gringos. In Sonia's ongoing battles over her family's land, she told me, "The name Perry is the strongest tool I have."
Sonia Perry's difficulties stem from the fact that like so many campesinos, her family has no title to the land they have lived on for five generations. In fact, Cassidy and Sundance had the same problem. When they were forced to take a quick leave of Argentina (after authorities pinned an Argentinian bank robbery on them despite clear evidence that they couldn't have possibly been responsible for the hoist), they were also unable to sell their land. In his book, "The Last Outlaws," the author writes, "The ranchland could not be sold because it was homesteaded property and not deeded to them..."
Sonia’s difficulties escalated when a few years ago, the local municipality sold the Perry land to a developer. Despite the traditional practice of campesinos being able to live on “their” land even if they couldn’t sell it, and maybe because it was light-skinned blonde woman who lived there now, the new “owner” was given a deed to the Perry land with his name on it. When Sonia went to court to fight the sale, the court upheld the new deed that bore the name of the new owner as well as what Sonia claims is a ficticious name as the seller. There is no mention of the municipality on the deed. “I am in a battle to keep our land,” Sonia tells me, “and it’s only 14 hectares.”
The next day as we walked the increasingly familiar streets of Cholila, we were a little more wary of who we greeted!

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

There's No Place Like Home -- Almost

There's No Place Like Home -- Almost

Yesterday, I rode Judy down to Cholila from the lakeside farm of Ivan Hueche, the young guide we hired to take us (successfully this year) up to the Tigre Glacier. It was a destination that locked gates and, as we learned last week, a circuitous and challenging route prevented us from reaching last year. It was an amazing 7 days of spectacular mountain views, revelations about the canniness of our equine friends, new appreciation for the campesino life that continues to rule in this stretch of the Andes Mountains, clear blue skies and starry starry nights -- and, of course, dust, lots of dust.

For the three-hour ride into Cholila, I had the other two horses in tow since Alex had picked up a bit of an intestinal bug and was running a low fever. We'd been a bit concerned that it was Hanta Virus, but a quick trip to the doctor satisfied us that it was nothing more than an Argentian form of Montezuma's and pretty mild at that -- says Nikki! (Yes, a quick trip to a doctor without an appointment is possible here. And after a brief examination and handing Alex half a dozen pills to bring the fever down and two packages of salt to rehydrate him, the doctor charged us nothing.)

Ivan and his young girlfriend Jessica accompanied me for the first 30 minutes of my journey, proving that not everyone in Patagonia can ride a horse. Seems that while Jessica can swing a mean axe, her skills do not extend to a horse. (Though if the romance continues she likely will pick up the skill.) When they turned back, I was on my own. The three horses made a long shadow as the sun neared the spectacular mountains we'd enjoyed for the last few days. The humidity level hovered at Saskatchewan levels so the sky was beyond blue. Nary a blade of grass moved in the windless evening. I couldn't have been happier.

Twenty minutes further down the road, which was little more than a dirt track, a red Volkswagon appeared up ahead. The car pulled over and as I came alongside, out jumped Aldo. A neighbour of Ivan's, he'd joined us at Ivan's for breakfast the day we'd set off for the Tigre, and waved farewell as we rode away that morning. Aldo was excited to hear about how our trip had gone and vowed that if we did it again, he would accompany us. He climbed back into his car and I followed the narrow road down to valley bottom, riding past only one other house. It was as simple as Ivan's, and sheep, cows and a few horses nibbled bits of dry broken grass around the pole barn. One horse was saddled up and tied to a tree ready for who knows what; the dogs barked my passing, but no one came out. Half a dozen horses lounged on the road ahead until my approach caused their ears to perk up. They separated to let my train of horses pass through. An indignant cow jumped into the ditch to give us space as he snorted his displeasure.

Eventually, I arrived at the narrow single lane bridge that crossed the Rio Blanco. Old wooden boards spanned the bridge. They were punched through in places by bucket-sized holes. Over top of these decrepit planks were two lines of thick boards lying in a perpendicular direction. They were set wide enough apart to accommodate the wheels of a car and were ample for an automobile's tires and, therefore a horse's hoof. Judy wasn't keen on the hollow sound when she stepped on the bridge, but walked on with Canela and Moro following. I had to trust they would not step in one of the bucket-sized holes. We made it across safely and I breathed a sigh of relief. The bridge had actually been worrying me. I reached the paved road, but there was a small dusty path in the wide ditch made by the dozens of horses that pass along this route on a given day, so I was able to keep clear of the odd vehicle that passed by. In Cholila, you are more likely to see someone ride by on a horse than a bicycle.

As I arrived in the small town at about 7:30pm, the sun was still above the mountain tops. It wouldn't be dark until after 9pm, but the air was beginning to cool after a sizzling hot day. When I passed a field where a farmer was cutting a rich crop of dark green alfalfa, I smelled hay and was reminded of days spent tossing haybales as a kid. I'd looked forward to this little excursion on my own and wasn't really ready to enter the civilization, such as it was, in this sleepy town. As the horses and I walked up a paved street lined with modest houses set behind low wood or wire fences with green lawns and an occasional rose bush, I noticed a thin rake of a man standing on the narrow grassy area that separated the concrete sidewalk from the street. A long thin pony tail emerged from a wide-brimed felt hat. At his feet was a large toolbox. He seemed to be looking my way. "Juan," I said when I realized it was the vet who had treated Canela, and had Alex, Beto and me over for a lamb asado at his small house in the campo outside Cholila. "How was the Tigre?" he asked. It seemed everyone knew about our journey. "It was fantastic," I said, explaining how amazing it was and how much we'd enjoyed getting to know our guide Ivan. "Ivan's dogs caught two jabali (wild pigs)," I told him. "We kept the first one (which Ivan gutted, skinned and then slung over his horse's haunches), but let the second larger one go. It was a mother who was obviously nursing babies." Juan took a quick look at Canela's now mostly healed wound and announced her in perfect health before we said our goodbyes.

I decided to ride up the wide main street. Some, likely Peronista, goverrnment in Chubut Province, where Cholila is located, had decided these little towns should have great boulevards as main streets. In Cholila, a stretch of grass the width of most streets in a Canadian town, separated double-laned streets running in either direction. Well tended gardens dotted the grassy strip between tall, arching lampposts that ran the full length of the boulevard. Whereas, these grand boulevards often seemed more fitting to Paris than a small Patagonian puebla, in Cholila's case, the grandeur was balanced since the street led right out of town and into a spectacle of snow-capped, jagged peaked mountains that gleamed under the setting sun at my back.

I tied up the horses outside the small grocery store and picked up a few supplies for dinner. Dry crisps for poor Alex, a nice Pinot Noir, some yoghurt and a grapefruit for me -- all things I'd craved after a week of eating goat every night since Ivan had packed an entire goat along for our dining pleasure. Goat is very good and Ivan certainly knew how to cook it -- barbequed, in soup and in stew -- but after six days I was ready for something different. I would have picked up some vegetables, but in this carne-mad country where people go their entire lives without eating anything green, the limp zucchinis and carrots didn't entice me much.

Back in the saddle, I continued down the main thoroughfare when I heard someone call out. I looked over my left shoulder, and across the wide street, I saw Don Aviles waving madly. We had run into him a number of times in our wanderings and his smile for us was always as wide as his healthy girth. I  waved back calling out my greetings and continued on my way. The pavement gave way to a dirt road recently upgraded and the horses picked up the pace. They knew there was good pasture and access to water in Lago Mosquito at Camping Ricardo's where we'd stayed previously and where Alex was hopefully recuperating. As the sun dropped, a 1970s panel truck rumbled past and I recognized it as Cholila's old ambulance, now a regular truck for some campesino.

Cholila and the Rio Blanco and the Andes Mountains that it cozies up to will never become home for me like Belfountain and Caledon and the Credit River and the Niagara Escarpment are home, but I relished the sense of belonging that I was coming to feel. A wave from a friend, an inquiry about a wounded horse, a familiar truck.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Rolling With the Punches (Part 11)


You can make out the round corral and paddocks in the grassy area where we camped
among the mice and a raging bull near the Rio Argentino.

Rolling With the Punches (Part 11)

 If you read my last (and first) post of this trip, you’ll know that Canela sustained a nasty wound, caused, for all we know by a randy Billy goat. Beto had sewed up the gapping hole in her leg, but my Pony Club alter ego turned out to be right. It became infected though we caught it before it made its way too deeply into her knee. The vet said that once infection gets into an articulated joint there are problems. Cleaning up the damage wasn’t pretty – lots more blood and needles and leather contraptions and tranquilizers to keep poor Canela still – but it worked. The heat and swelling were down in a day though the vet had to see her twice. When Canela seemed to be on the mend, I asked the vet what would have happened had we not had him treat her. He said the swelling would have kept increasing and she would not have been able to use her leg, which would have meant circulation would basically stop. The short story is that for 800 pesos (about $100), we saved Canela’s life.

Given we were now down two horses (Canela had to rest for a few days) and had no guide, since Beto had to stay with Canela to care for her, we altered our plans. With three riding horses and one packhorse, we set off with Danny on foot, leaving Beto, Canela and his other horse behind at Julio’s. We rode over the low mountain pass behind Julio’s lodge and set up camp in the Pedrigoso River valley below. The previous year, the horses had found a grassy spot near the smaller Argentina River that runs parallel to the Pedrigoso. It had lots of pasture and a number of fenced paddocks and we set up in this place. It was a sublime place to camp. The horses had water and grass and we found a spot tucked in among the niri and mosqueta and retamo trees for our tents and campfire. It was a winter camp for Julio's neighbour and Julio had told us it would be okay to use the corrals.

The valley is wide and flat, perhaps 2 kilometres across and is reminiscent of Montana in my mind – but with better weather. The summers are longer and the winters are more mild. Puma wander in these hills, wild boar are evident by patches of disturbed soil where they have been digging and we watched enormous Caranchos (large hawks) ride the thermals above high cliffs, veering off from time to time like an escape car leaves the scene of a bank robbery. But as we would learn, it was none of these critters that plagued us.

When I went to clean up, the crystal clear water in the Argentina River gave me a headache when I poured it over my dusty head of hair. But as I stood there in the middle of that sandy-bottomed stream with the morning sunshine warming my back, I was confident that no one might happen along to disturb me. Those parts of my body that seldom feel the heat of a hot sun or are touched by a fresh breeze tingled. I stood in the cold knee-deep water and gazed at the mountaintops – a few sporting a white cap of snow. Some people talk about the freedom they feel sailing on an open ocean, others have a similar sensation when they climb a vertical rock face or soar off a mountain top in a paraglider. But the intimate privacy of standing buck naked and freshly clean in air so fresh you want to drink it trumps all other ways to shed yourself of the shackles of our 21st century hectic lives in my opinion.

Alex and Danny fished; we followed an old road to the glacier-fed, see-to-the-bottom Pedrigoso River where it cascaded from a deep mountain canyon and on to the dry desert. Twenty kilometres on it would empty into Lago Cholilo.

One day as the sun neared the mountain peaks and evening, with its soft buttery light was catching hold, I saddled up Judy. We climbed up a ridge behind our campsite and followed our noses and a complicated network of cattle tracks picking our way around low-lying, thorny bushes toward a distant ridge made visible by the dense green evergreens that populated it. We had no destination in mind; there was no obvious single path. We just wandered in the general direction of the ridge as the sun sunk lower in the clear blue sky. As we did, we moved past the shoulder of a rounded hill. Behind it I could now see yet another series of jagged snow-capped peaks. Behind that was likely another and then another – all part of the Andes that form the border between Argentina and Chile. In all likelihood, I was actually looking at Chile.

At the end of our wander, I turned Judy around, gave her her head and let her find our way back to camp. She picked her way confidently, sometimes following her own hoof prints clearly visible in the sandy dusty soil, but other times she just using her senses honed over centuries to find our way home.

After three nights out camping, we returned reluctantly to Julio’s. We had to get Danny back so he could catch a bus and then a flight home to England. We also had to escape the plague of mice that were becoming an increasing problem to anything plastic including Alex’s camelbak water bladder, his sunscreen and a foam pillow. We hung our food in trees in tightly sealed bags to avoid problems. Having to leave due to mice might sound as if we are awfully urban, but it turned out that we had arrived during an actual plague of mice or ratones as they are called locally. They actually have a name for these outbreaks, which is a ratada. The dramatic rise in population of these small rodents was due to the flowering two years previously in 2012 of the colihue plant. Colihue is a local bamboo that only blooms about every 70 years. (Some studies suggest it is only one type of bamboo that blooms so seldom. The others bloom in cycles ranging from 12- to 30-years. Either way, it doesn’t bloom very often.) In the years that follow, there is so much seed around that the population of mice explodes in areas where bamboo is common. While mice are generally not much more than an inconvenience, these mice often carry Hanta Virus and while we were there there were several cases of the resulting ailment that can be lethal. In fact, we had to change our plans again because we were advised to not go up the Tigre valley at all due to the mice, and the campground near Lago Chililo had been shut down for the season because of the mice.

During the 3-day festival they consume 10,000 kilos of beef and 300 sheep,
making it the world's largest barbecue. 


We returned to Julio’s for a night and then headed down into Cholila for an afternoon to attend the enormous asado (Argentinian barbeque) festival and rodeo there. Although it’s quite a spectacle – imagine dual lines of 50 or more cattle and lamb carcasses roasting crucifix style over open wood-burning fires, but we didn’t have a huge stomach for the busy crowds and blaring music. It was a bit too much for us after the peace and quiet in the Pedrigoso valley (broken only by a vocal, dirt-scratching bull that became Laura’s nemisis) especially given the lake trip Julio treated us to that morning. He took us out on his boat to tour the mirror-like Lago Lezana on whose shore his Lodge resides. This spring-fed lake that is 11k long and about 2k wide sits in the shoulder of a low-lying mountain. A steep forested ridge frames the lake on the side of Julio’s lodge. On the other side, a lower rolling hill hems the water in. There are only four houses on the entire lake. The original farmstead is cozied in at the western end of the lake on a gentle sloping piece of land that was cleared decades ago. There are a few simple wooden buildings, cows graze. Our horses, who we allowed to run free (except escape-artist Moro who we tethered), discovered the pasture at this site. They looked up in surprise as we pulled in close to them in Julio’s boat. But curiosity was no competition for the rich green grass on the lake’s edge. We watched them munch away contentedly, their legs hidden from view behind the slender reeds on the lakeshore. They seemed unaware of the backdrop of mountain peaks behind them.