The Changing of the Guardiero

A pale light sneaks under the curtains this morning, bringing with it a familiar smell. Snow. Peeking out, I find a world blanketed in white. White pastures, white mountains, and in between, the icy grey waters of the Seno Ultima Esperanza, Last Hope Sound. They tell me that it never normally snows in November, but I know to expect no mercy from the Patagonian weather.

A pack of feral dogs trot past the gate. From the little barn Grizzly raises a weary ear. He is the guardiero, the equine sentry and my nocturnal companion. Each night a different horse takes up the post, and while the others graze in pastures around the town, the guardiero waits at the house, ready to round up escapees. No gaucho could ever rest easy without a horse in sight, ready to saddle up and race out of the gate.

Today my task is to change the guardiero, and it is my first real test. I am to ride Grizzly to the pasture, separate another horse from the herd, swap over the saddle, and ride the new horse back. No problemo.

At this point, I feel I must introduce you to the real protagonist of this piece: the Patagonian wind. Of course, people had warned me about the wind, but until you experience it for yourself, you can’t comprehend the phenomenon. It is a devious wind, icy, relentless and brutal. It rips through your clothes to chill you to your core. It hurls dirt in your face, rips blankets from your hands, and does its best to knock you off your feet or off your horse. It puts knots in your hair that take twenty minutes to comb out. It blows the weather through, so that you can expect to be sunburned, soaked through, and pelted with hail before lunchtime. It is an ageing wind, that makes you squint and hunch into your clothes. Thanks to the wind, I have a permanent red nose, and the look of someone who has been dragged through several hedges backwards, plus I have aged about fifteen years in my first week. Somehow, my new friends and employees, Boris and Magan, manage to look impossibly youthful and attractive, and always neatly turned out. I must find out their secret. In short, the wind is the enemy of the trainee gaucho. It converts the simplest of tasks into a great challenge and frequently makes you look quite silly. And so, it is with some trepidation that I ride up to the pasture.

Catching your horse is not so hard, if you are willing to break with tradition. I use my own old faithful method of bribery, walking confidently towards the herd with a nosebag full of alfalfa over my shoulder. It works. Of course, more traditional gauchos would spit with disgust at this unconventional technique. For them, the only way to catch a horse is with a lasso. But in this wind I couldn’t lasso my own foot.

Swapping over the saddles proves rather more complicated. Saddles here are comfy, but their complex layers of wool blankets and sheepskins make saddling a horse feel like you are making a double bed in a wind tunnel. Only the bed, in this case, eyes you nervously and leaps sideways each time you get close with the blankets.

Then there are the knots. Oh the knots. Things here are built for durability, not convenience. Clips and buckles are for sissies, real gauchos tie knots. There is one knot for tying your horse to a ropey fence, another for trying one horse to another, another to secure your saddle, another to stop the wind snatching your boina from your head, and I must learn them all. If this blog were a Hollywood blockbuster, this part would be a Rocky-style montage. You can hum “The Eye of the Tiger” to yourself if you like. There I am, brow furrowed in fierce concentration, rope in hands, endlessly fumbling with loops and ends, muttering “the rabbit comes out of the hole, runs around the tree…” until at last the knot holds, and my horse stays tied, rather than running off with me foundering in his wake.

In the end, the changing of the guardiero goes without too much of a hitch. I might look a little bedraggled, and after spending twenty minutes wrestling with the rickety wire gate I’m sweating like a stuck pig under all of my wooly jumpers, but I have a triumphant smile on my face as I ride back onto the ranch. I have passed the first test, and have now earned the right to dress like a gaucho. I proudly don the bombachas and boina, that is, the baggy trousers and the beret that is always worn at a jaunty angle depending on the wind direction. Now at least I look the part. But this gaucha has much to learn.