Gauchos Don’t Cry

And so, there I was, shivering alone in a hospital corridor. Clutching my damaged arm and my bruised ribs and covered in white plaster dust, I looked and felt like I had just crawled from a wrecked building. Was this the end of the gaucha dream? Here, amid the peeling paint and the smell of formaldehyde, was this it? The traumatologist had just prescribed eight weeks in plaster. And forget about jumping on a horse afterwards, he added. Waiting for the x-ray, I could do nothing but sit, and try to make sense of the sequence of events that had led to this moment.

It begins with a bus. A battered old bus with no engine. Its travelling days are over, now it sits quietly on a half-abandoned estancia called Laguna Amarga, Bitter Lake, at the entrance to the Torres del Paine National Park. The bus now has a wood burning stove, beds, and comfy seats where you can enjoy a mate, window or aisle. This was to be my occasional second home, and last week was the scene of an intensive wilderness gaucho training exercise, which, as you’ll have already gathered, did not end well.

The bus enjoys possibly the best view in all of Chile, with the vast craggy pillars of the Torres del Paine soaring behind it. Yet the site is not exactly an unspoilt wilderness. It has that strange mix of desolate beauty and disrepair that seems uniquely Patagonian, a place that was once bustling with activity and sheep now sits quietly and stoically still in the wind. The estancia owners gave up on the sheep trade after a huge fire ripped through the fences, leaving the sheep at the mercy of thieves and puma. Now herds of guanaco mill around instead. The decrepit bus fits right in among the burned fence posts and rusty wire. Elegiac, I think, as I trudge though the rain to the little tin hut toilet, a family of unfeasibly fluffy cats watching me pass from the shelter of a tumbledown doorway. Elegiac is the word, infused with a feeling of loss.

This was not quite how I had foreseen my remote outpost. I had envisaged a cosy lakeside settlement populated by gore-tex clad mountaineers, drinking hot chocolate and comparing crampons. Instead I find that my prospective neighbours are a hunchbacked old shepherd, his skeletal horse, and a few other shady men in torn overalls who seem to appear from nowhere. I’ll never get through a night alone here, I think, picturing myself crouched sleepless in the darkness, barricading the bus door, hatchet in hands, waiting for a face to appear at one of the windows.

There is no mobile signal here, no electricity, no phones. But there is a trusty wireless. Over breakfast we listen to the public announcements on the radio. Sandwiched between the news and the folk tunes, these messages are often the only form of communication for those living on remote estancias. They range from the urgent to the mundane, or perhaps they are all in elaborate code. Senor Rodriguez at Estancia Laslo. Don’t worry, your dog has arrived home safe and well. Salutations, your wife.

Our adventures start as soon as we reach the horses’ pasture, where we are greeted with the site of some exuberant equine copulation. It would seem that a wild stallion has jumped into the pasture and is busy getting busy with the mares. It’s a problem. We saddle up, round up the herd and try to cut him out. The stallion, unfazed, heads off into the mountains with the entire herd in tow. This, apparently, is what wild stallions do, they try to steal your herd. We tear after them, and Boris manages to turn them back, but by now his horse is half-dead under him. Mine is in better shape, so we swap. As I nurse the poor creature back home, I wonder if this is what counts as a normal day in the office at Laguna Amarga.

And then, the training begins in earnest. Boris is a military man, and a stern taskmaster, and I am his hopeful but hapless apprentice. It’s a difficult dynamic. And to make it all the more difficult, he is a perfect gentleman. When he sends me out to wash the dishes in the pouring rain, he hands me my coat, and hopes I won’t get soaked through. He doesn’t hesitate to tick me off though. In fact, he spends most of his time telling me off. And behind every lecture lurks a serious consequence: go down that path and you’ll loose your tourists over a cliff, leave the latch off this gate and your horses will escape and be eaten by pumas, leave the gas on and you’ll blow up the bus. I don’t doubt any of this, and I am trying my best, but it seems that nothing I do quite comes up to scratch, I take too long tightening my girth, my saddlecloths have wrinkles, my coat flaps when I dismount. I’m despairing, but I’m darned if I’m going to let him know that. So I grit my teeth.

“Yes Boris. You’re right Boris”.

And then, during one lecture, I realise that a tear duct has betrayed me, and that a big fat blob of saline weakness is travelling slowly down my cheek. We both choose to ignore it.

“You are helpless like a baby here”, he says, “Everything is Chinese to you. So you must practice, you must have faith that you can do it, you must find your inner strength.”

We ride out onto the mountainside on the third day. By now I’ve learned most of the trails, and can identify half of the passing critters and name the lakes. It is a glorious day with perfect views, and yet my head is crowded with doubts. Could I really work out here on my own? Will I ever meet Boris’ high standards or will he demote me to poo scooping duty for the rest of the season? And then suddenly my horse rears up and we both go crashing over backwards. It happens in slow motion, allowing me plenty of time to feel quite indignant about the fact that I’m about to die squashed under a horse on a Chilean mountainside and that it is most certainly not my fault. But then, surprisingly, I find I am not dead. My legs still work, my body still has a three dimensional form, I’m not flattened into the ground like in the cartoons. But oh lordy does my arm hurt.

My dazed state, together with a recently acquired First Aid in the Workplace certification, makes me an unruly patient. As Boris secures the horses I fashion myself a nifty little sling from my scarf and lie down with my feet on a rock to improve bloodflow to the head, cursing my omission to pack a foil survival blanket in my saddlebag.

“What are you doing?”, he says, “get out of that mud!”

“Listen, I could DIE from shock, I don’t care if my bombachas get dirty.”

“Mujer! You are not going to die, ok? Now go and stick your arm in that water trough over there, it’ll take down the swelling. And when we get back to Puerto Natales you should eat a steak, your body needs some meat.”

I refuse to climb onto Boris’ horse to be led back to the bus. That, I say, would be undignified. So I stagger, Boris walks, and the horses amble along behind. Inexplicably, as we near the road some tourists leap out of their car and take a photo of our sad little convoy. On the way Boris entertains me with the story of how on a remote estancia he once sewed his own fingers back on with a blunt needle. Ok, I get it. Gauchos are tough, they make do with what they have in an isolated situation, and then get on with their work. I don’t care, I want an x-ray and some strong painkillers.

“It’s not broken,” he insists, “you’d be crying if it was”.

Little does he know, that I have finally found that inner strength, and that for perhaps the first time in three days, I don’t feel like crying. Courage, as the song goes, couldn’t come at a worse time. This is the moment to give up and go home, to admit that I can’t hack it here, and yet I am filled with a fierce determination to carry on. As Boris packs up the equipment and loads some half-wild horses into the trailer ready for our long journey back to civilization, I march into the bus and pack up my rucksack using my good hand and my teeth. I will not be beaten by this situation.

But Boris, for once, is wrong. My arm is broken. The next day I’m sporting the kind of plaster cast that I’ve only ever seen within the pages of The Beano. I finally admit defeat. What use is a one-armed gaucha? I can’t tie my shoelaces, let alone gallop up a mountain with three horses is tow. If I were a horse they would have carted me away to be turned into jerky. This is what happens to horses here who are deemed worthless or can no longer work, and is a fate that awaits even Boris’ most treasured mount and lifelong friend Gringo. This is a harsh place, there are harsh rules. Broken bones heal, and I could get back in the saddle before the season ends. But do I want to? Or is it time to limp home?

Herding the Unruly

There are few things more beautiful to me than a herd of horses. Grazing quietly or pelting along at a full out gallop, this is how horses should be, a group, a single entity, linked together, moving and reacting as one, communicating with subtle and not so subtle signals: a lick of the lips, the lowering of a head or bared teeth and flying hooves. This is how our little herd of ten horses live here, and how they travel. One of my jobs is to ride out and herd the horses between their pasture and the ranch, along dirt roads past the houses and smallholdings that make up the Huertos Familiares outside Puerto Natales.

This, I think, is a task that I will enjoy. In my minds eye I picture myself effortlessly driving the herd before me, directing any wayward horse with a steely glare and a crack of the revenke. The revenke is a sort of spanky stick thing that looks like a rustic piece of S&M tackle. I'm actually not allowed to carry one yet, as Magan says I am likely to leave it behind when I stop to open and close gates. Instead I have a piece of soft yellow rope to wield, which doesn't look nearly as cool. But this is besides the point. The lesson I'm about to learn, is that this herding business is no piece of cake, spanky stick or no spanky stick. Gorgeous as a galloping herd is, until you can read each flick of an ear and react accordingly and quickly, it is an unruly and unwieldy beast.

Since my arrival I’ve herded the horses back and forth many times with Magan or Boris, and a few times on my own. It has always gone smoothly, it has been fun. Then one evening, returning the herd to the pasture on my own, it all goes pear shaped.

My trusty mount for this venture is El Zaino, who has just arrived on the ranch with the express purpose of gaining some weight. Like a darker version of Don Quixote’s Rocinante, he is painfully thin and has a weary, resigned look on his face. The poor creature doesn’t even have a proper name, “El Zaino” just means “The Brown One”. Rangey and long-legged he is, but nippy he is not. It’s a poor workman who blames his tools, but I can’t help but feel a little under-horsed for this task. What’s more, as a newcomer he has not yet been accepted into the herd, and is understandably reluctant to go near any of the other horses for fear of getting booted in the face.

At first we make slow progress towards the pasture. The horses stop to graze, to explore the neighbours’ gardens or to bicker between themselves. “Hup hup!” I shout, “HUP HUP!”, swinging a rope over my head and flicking the end of my reins at them. People begin to emerge from their houses as my tone gets more shrill. But as we near the pasture there is a sudden shift in gear. Every herd has its puntero, or pathfinder, who trots at the front and decides the direction of travel. This is not necessarily the most dominant horse, the usual puntera of this herd is a sensible little old mare called Rosita. The other horses bully her, but they also follow her faithfully. At this point Rosita has always neatly turned off the road and led the others through the gate, but Rosita is not here today to suggest such a sensible plan, and they trot straight past. Then they pick up speed. I try to get past them. They go faster. They’re now in a full gallop. I’ve committed the number one sin in the gaucho bible: I’ve lost control of my herd.

They veer off the road and cross a broad pasture. I have no idea where they are heading but they are going there with purpose. At the top they jump out over a low barbed wire fence. I remember the pictures in my Pony Club Manual of the nasty jagged cuts which barbed wire tends to inflict on horses’ legs. I’m not about to let that happen to the poor old Zaino, and so jump down and stand on the fence so that he can neatly step over. I get back on just in time to see the herd gallop straight over a neatly planted vegetable patch. I despair. I pull up and scream every Spanish obscenity I know after them. “You filthy sons of bitches!” I screech, “I shit on the whore that spawned you!” Spanish is nothing if not a satisfying language in which to swear, and I feel better for a moment. Until I notice the small elderly gentleman who is standing quietly to my side, looking aghast, his gaze switching between the beleaguered vegetable patch and the foul-mouthed gaucha on the bony horse who has just appeared on his property.

“Buenas tardes senor” I try.

“No te conosco,” he replies, “I don’t know you. Are those your horses?”

He has me there. “Um, yes.”

“I recently planted that potato patch you know.”

“I’m terribly sorry”, I simper weakly.

We stand there together for a moment, surveying the scene of destruction. In front of me are a series of wires which were just high enough for the riderless herd to pass under, but which would decapitate me if I forged on ahead. Plus I’d have to ride straight over the potato patch, which seems a little rude. The man points to a track to the side which is free from garrotting wires, and The Zaino and I take off again.

Eventually we get ahead of the horses and manage to turn them around. They gallop back downhill towards their pasture, and this time I’m determined not to let them go. Again, the haughty voice of my Pony Club manual rings in my ears “Never gallop across unfamiliar land, you may come across hazards such as holes, boggy ground and wire fences”. This field is riddled with holes, bogs and rusty wire, that much I know as I’ve just ridden up it. But it seems a little late for caution. I shut my eyes, lean back, and urge The Zaino into a flat out gallop.

Mercifully I find Boris parked up near the pasture, and at the sound of their master’s voice, the errant herd trot neatly through the gate. The Zaino and I traipse home, exhausted and dripping with sweat despite the bitter cold. Back at the ranch I try to sneak off into my casita to have a shower and weep quietly over my failings as a gaucha, but Boris insists that I come in for a mate and a debrief by the stove. “The horses just need to learn the sound of your voice,” he assures me “and they need to learn to respect you. Until then, they’ll just mess you around”.

So this is my new challenge. To claim my place at the top of the pecking order. To improve my vocal skills. To earn the respect of a herd of hairy delinquents. I feel like a new teacher on the first day of term. Wish me luck.

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.

Packing

Floor length oilskin coat. Check.

Down jacket. Check.

Thermals. Check.

Hat, gloves, scarf, neck gator, body warmer, woolly socks. Check.

Assorted wool jumpers with snowflake motif. Check.

Compeed. Check.

Compass. Check

Whistle. Check.

Marmite. Check.

Teabags. Check.

I’m ready! Patagonian weather, do your worst! Bring it on! Yeah!

I survey the mountain of luggage. Arctic explorers have probably set off with less, and I don’t have a team of huskies to lug it around. Re-check smallprint regarding baggage allowance. The luggage mountain weighs considerably more. Oh BOTHER.

Rearrange, repack, reweigh. Ditch girlie Christmas outfit and the marmite and decide to wear woollies and oilskins on the flight, with other clothes stuffed in the pockets. Hang the funny looks I’ll get. And the long queue behind me at security. And the fact that it is likely to be about 30 degrees when I pass through Buenos Aires. My cousin Liam promises to trump me in a few months when he boards his flight over dressed in neoprene chest waders and brandishing a fishing rod.

Here the journey begins! Today London, tomorrow Buenos Aires, then on to El Calafate and my final destination of Puerto Natales, Chile. There I hope to learn the mysterious ways of the gaucho, providing that I can find friendly gauchos who are willing to share their secrets with a blonde, northern lentil-lover, and a girl at that. I’ll be posting here whenever inspiration hits and I find an internet connection. Provided that my fingers are not frozen solid.