Deserving my belt buckles

As a norteño (from northern mexico) I grew to like those big cowboy belt buckles. The funny part is that my family moved out of their ranch before I was born. I had only rode a horse when I was 5 and we were on vacation.

When I was little I watched the Disney movie where donald went to South America. Well, I already acomplished the part of going to Lake Titicaca. In another part Goofy goes to Argentina and trys to be a Gaucho. Well, I just went to Tucuman at the Valley of Tafi where I too was Gaucho for a day.Its been two days and my whole body is still sore from the cabalgata. The ride up was slow and steady, slow to the point where I wanted to go faster but didn't know how. Come to think of it, the real Gaucho, Amaiso, didn't really give me any instructions just told me to get on and follow him.

We rode up to an ecological farm at the top of a nearby serro (hill). Roberto, the owner, came out to give me the tour. I was thirsty so I started getting my mate ready. Things kicked off good when I was offered some regional wine called Patero. Roberto's mission is to turn back the damage that man has done to Pachamama (mother earth). The little ranch has various livestock, bee hives, herb garden (took down notes on the medicinal ones for Cindy) and is all run with natural compost. After the awesome Andean Captain Planet tour which included me hand feeding corn to a dozen llamas, it was time to go. But before that, Amaiso shared more of the wine and Roberto had me try other type of wines he makes. There was also a licor made from nuts that was similar to Baileys but more delicious. It is fermented with aguardiente. Before heading out we toasted with shots of aguardiente. You can imagine how the ride down went...I was flying with the speed of aguardiente! One time as I was bouncing up and down, my axis slowly tilted away from perpendicular and I felt close to falling off the horse. At a few parts we stopped, at first I thought it was to take a look at the amazing view, but really Amaiso and I took swigs of the Patero until the bottle was empty.

Back at home base he showed me how the bolas worked to take down a horse. I wanted to chat with the gaucho some more so I invited him to lunch. We ordered empanadas and when it came time for bebidas I just wanted some water or coca light at the most, but we ended up splitting another bottle of Patero. I ended my cabalgata experience with a well deserved siesta.


On a sidenote, I was having mate at the plaza in Tafi when I took out my charango and started playing around. I had found some chords that fit the Chacarera style. To my surprise, a person walking by recognized the style and said "play me a chacarera, friend."