Milongueros for gauchos

I’ve been Argentina, land of gauchos, for almost three years, and the closest I’ve come to horses has been at Feria de Mataderos. It’s my favourite street-market in Buenos Aires, and is complete with its very own gauchos racing on horseback for ‘the ring’. But, as I discovered on Sunday, it’s not exactly in the same league as the countryside village of Gouin and its annual cake festival, when it comes to either gauchos or horses. No, no, no indeed.

Gouin, about 140km from Buenos Aires and needing a car (or a horse) to reach it, was celebrating deep-fried pastries stuffed with various goodies (and called pastelitos) at the weekend. Knowing about the pastelito fest in advance, I went expecting cakes, and to my surprise and delight, found myself standing on a dirt street, within inches of uncountable numbers of beautiful horses ridden by men, women, children, whole families even… How can I have possibly been in Argentina for so long, and not actually touched the ‘real gaucho deal’? I wondered. Too busy dancing tango with milongueros in slick city salons, I guess. And perhaps it’s time for that to change. I was certainly conscious that having once been more of a country girl myself, I stuck out as a city chick in my pink velour tracksuit top… but you know what, the gauchos didn’t seem to mind. As I stopped to take pictures, they chatted with Me and C. like we were old friends. One or two asked me to send the photos on, via an acquaintance of theirs in Buenos Aires, you understand, because none of them seemed to have email addresses. What was I doing there? they asked. Exploring with my love, an Argentine, I said. Smiles all round.

The sight of multiples of iron bed frames being used as parrillas put a huge grin on C.’s face. Had he ever witnessed, even in his Argentine life, so many cows, pigs, sheep and home made sausages being grilled and roasted at once? It certainly stopped me in my tracks, and I think my vegetarian sister might have fainted at the Everest-sized piles of animal bodies being cooked and eaten in one afternoon. I found it tough to stop myself staring at the guys managing the outdoor kitchens. Huge teams of them, with eight foot poles (for turning the meat) in their hands, and collections of knives poking from their belts. Despite the ash, dirt and (after the recent downpours) mud, I couldn’t quite believe that so many of them were wearing white espadrilles (as we call them in England – you know, those summer canvas shoes with the string base that we use to go to the beach). Don’t they need a new pair every day, especially when it rains? I asked C. Tradition, he said. And they’re comfortable, you see. Ah… right.

As the afternoon turned from cakes to parades and finally to displays of gaucho skill, I was most fascinated by the men who led strings of horses as if by magic: only the first horse, known as the madrina, in the tropilla (the name for the group) was on a rein. She had a bell around her neck, and the other horses followed the sound… la madrina stands still, so do they; she circles, they circle; if she gets free and gallops for the horizon, they all make a break for freedom too. The groups of horses moved with the synchronicity of shoals of fish, and their united behaviour had me mouthing, Wow! The climax came when the gauchos penned the many tropillas together in a corner, separating the groups from their madrinas, who were led to the far side of the field. The remaining horses were spun into a frenzy, and then suddenly released to seek out the sound of their particular leader’s bell. The first gaucho to gather his whole tropilla won the prize. The speed at which the horses shot from the pen was electrifying, and I marvelled at the gauchos’ ability to bring the tropillas home so fast. Incredible. Have you got anything like that in England? asked C. Er… sheep dog trials… ? I replied, a little sheepishly.

Gouin made me realise that there is just so much of Argentina that I haven’t seen yet. And that there are probably whole worlds within my own Britain that I haven’t discovered either (I’ve never been as close to a sheepdog in action as I was to those madrinas and their bells). If we travelled and explored and adventured, even only in our own countries, for our entire lifetimes, we wouldn’t see even a tiny percentage of the sum total of human experience would we? Of course I knew that, but somehow Sunday made it clearer in my mind. I might be writing a guide book on the subject of tango in Buenos Aires and sometimes doing that feels like an awfully big and terribly important adventure, but it’s really such a teeny weeny fragment of life, affecting a relatively tiny group of people, and honestly it is pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Life-changing in my own journey to become a published writer maybe, but in the bigger picture…? Keep it all in perspective, Sal, whispered The Universe, loud and clear, in cake-and-gaucho-packed Gouin on Sunday. I was listening, and so I came back to Buenos Aires slightly less afraid of falling off the edge mainly because the edge seemed a hell of a lot littler.

To get to Gouin, we passed Luján, and I saw the Basilica towering in the distance. Three times in a month, Luján has popped into my life, and its presence feels reassuring. With similar synchronicity, in the last week there have been plenty of horses in my path. Not just in Gouin, but in two exciting recommendations for places to ride a horse myself if I want to. It’s as if I’m being offered something new to consider as the end of my work on Happy Tango approaches. And after so many months staring at my manuscript on a laptop screen, I have to say that fresh air and horseback sound inviting. Last time I rode was in Mongolia back in 2006 it is true, so I’m definitely going to be a bit rusty, and it’ll probably feel a bit scary. But hey, Universe, I’m up for it. I’m going to save my pesos, and I’m going to be trying either an estancia like this one or a horse-riding experience like this one or even both of them, very, very soon. After all, I am in Argentina. And there is more to Argentina than her gorgeous milongueros. Gauchos for a start. And they’re pretty damn gorgeous too.

And if you want to see the gauchos of Gouin, here are the wonderful photos.