Bienvenido!
Become a true “caballero” while visiting a ranch. There’s lots of choices out there. We wanted to keep this experience as “authentic” as possible. So we went for a very down-to-earth option at Rio Mitre. A super friendly guy came and pick us up at the hosteria (15 min early – go figure!) and together with another visitor we drove to the ranch, which takes about 1/2 hour.
Once arrived, you have plenty of time to soak up the splendid surrounding vistas, go and greet the horses, meet the always hungry goat, house cat and dog and warm up with a nice cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
Get on a horse!
Then it’s horseback riding time! There’s 2 options: go for a 2 hour ride or take the 4 hour trip. As our horseback riding experience is quite insignificant, we chose the first one, as we figured that would already be challenging enough. We had the best time! It went – highly unexpectedly – quite smooth. We had warned the guys upfront of our inexperience, so I guess they have weighed that in when choosing a horse for us, but still. In the beginning it was mostly just following the others and trying to not fall off. Certainly when they start going faster, that’s not as easy as it sounds, believe me. It took a while for me to find the rhythm. But during the last 1/2 hour or so, my husband and I really started to get the hang of it. Going faster when we wanted to, making them stop, go to the left or to the right – easy peasy.
When it comes to taking pictures, my husband wanted to take our actual camera with him, which they heavily advised against, given the fact that we didn’t have any experience (I had warned him upfront)… So we only had my mobile phone and the GoPro, but that’s more than enough. I don’t think it would have worked with the camera anyway – you have too much to worry about, so getting the focus right would be difficult as hell.
No idea what the name of my horse was (I asked twice and got a different answer), but it was a cutie. The one my husband got seemed to suffer from flatulence – each time he accelerated, it was an orchestra of farts, so funny!
That makes you hungry…
Anyway, after the awesome time on the horses, it was time for lunch. Upfront we had to choose between beef and lamb. We both took the beef and it was so good (with a lot of garlic). Drinks are to be paid extra, but the desert of fruit salad with cream was on the house.
Right before we left, the lady of the house (or that’s who we think she was), got her guitar out and started to sing and play two songs, which really sounded amazing. Great voice. It totally blended with the setting! And all of this 5 hour fun for the very reasonable price of 4.400 AR$ (about 110 EUR) for both of us (compared to the mountain bike trip from the Balcones of nearly 4.000 AR$ per person for 2,5 hours!).
Oh, a fun fact to close this down. Martin, the guy who we saw at BAFT when going to pay for our trip the day before, was hilarious. He taught us all about “maté”, which is a kind of tea typical for the area. We even got to taste it – very strong stuff!
Other Countries we visited
Have a look at the other countries we ‘achievied’ to visit, and other Achievies…
