Goodfellows Travels: Saturday 23rd to Tuesday 26th September 2006: ARGENTINA, Cordoba Sierras: ESTANCIA PUESTO VIEJO,

There are many places in the northern region of Argentina where you can experience life on a working farm living the life of the true Argentine Gauchos (cowboys). When we found this out it became a `must do´ for our time in Argentina.

Estancia Puesto Viejo is set in the middle of nowhere (one and half hours to the nearest town!) in the beautiful desert like landscape of the Cordoba Sierras (typical cowboy country with scenery straight out of any western!) right by the Rio Pintos. We loved the remoteness and tranquility of the place which was rather special as it was once been inhabited by the indigenous peoples of Argentina with ancient artifacts and drawings nearby.

The farm is family-run by the extremely warm and welcoming Virginia and her son Diego. For three of the four days we had the entire place to ourselves apart from Virginia and Diego and two Swiss girls - when we first arrived there were ten guests! In our time on the farm we all got to know each other quite well and really enjoyed each others company plus lots of games of `shithead´(made famous in the movie `How to lose a guy in 10 days´) into the late hours of the night!

The farm had rabbits, chickens, goats and cattle, all purely for eating (the goat was pretty meatless but Oliver loved the rabbit - Celina wouldn´t touch it as she´d kept rabbits as pets!) and we were able to help out with the daily activities of the farm of feeding the rabbits and goats. We were also able to ride any of the sixteen ponies so each day we would take a two hour ride through the sierras. The highlight of our trip was definitely herding the cattle back to the farm from the hills! It was so much fun playing cowboy, making the big fat cows run and shouting "YEE HAH!" even if we did get badly scratched from weaving in and out of the harsh thorny scrubland chasing after the cows that were trying to get away! We did such a good job of herding the big cows that the next day we got to herd the calves which was even harder but this just made it even more fun!!!

Our four days at Puesto Viejo have definitely been on of the highlights of our trip and is one experience we´ll never forget and one day we hope to return to the farm and play cowboy once again!

The Cowboy Crew!

(L-R: Diego, Nina, Valeria, Celina, Oliver, Virgina at front)