Unfortunately, the internet connection here is very weak, so I cannot post all the pictures I want right now as we have to get back for dinner. I will upload the rest later.
Rancho “El Carmen” 6/19
Here are some photos of her dad’s place that we stayed at before coming to Rancho Carmen.
And here is Rancho Carmen:
This is where I stay:
The days here at Carmen are long. I tutor the kids in the morning for two hours. The night before I usually get up at least once to stoke the fire and have to light a lantern with the matches at my bedside table to be able to see the wood. Surprisingly, it is not too cold here, but the humidity makes it feel freezing. The cold cuts right to your bones. I was constantly cold before buying a wool sweater from the local veterinary store. They sell feed, medicine, and all sorts of riding clothes.
At Carmen the cook prepares meals three times a day, and the food is always good.
I have my own guest house set up, which is quite comfortable. I have a picture of Olivia on my bedside table and my clothes all put away in the dresser. I even have my own shower with hot water. Unfortunately, my heater is a wood stove. This would not be unfortunate except that it is brand new and the idiots who built it coated the exterior of the metal chimney with tar. My room soon filled up with tar smoke as it burned from the hot smoke inside of the chimney. It got really thick before I realized it because I thought that the smell was coming from the radiator next door. When I turned on the fan, a curtain of smoke moved towards the door. Today some workers came and scraped off most of the tar, so it should be fine to go back in there.
I went riding with the kids today. They don’t like to gallop, so we trot instead and mash our brains to bits with all of the bouncing. This is me leading Sean’s horse as we got ready to ride a second time after having gone down to the store to buy some candy. While I was there, my horse let out a bunch of air and his saddle fell off completely. Thankfully, the husband of the shopkeeper, whose name is Quintana, helped me put it all back together, because I had not idea how to do it. However, I am learning. I think that I could fix it if it happened again.
When I was taking a siesta earlier today, Sean went out riding with one of the gaucho’s sons. When Sean’s horse came back with the saddle half-on, everyone got frantic. The gauchos hopped on horses bareback and galloped out into the campo in search of Sean, with Marcela driving the truck right behind them.
Sean was found soon enough. His cinch had come undone, just like mine, so his saddle slid off of the side of the horse. He fell on his side almost at a gallop, but he was fine.
Now I am just hanging out, trying not to feel hungry and trying to find something to do now that I am done with this blog. From now on, because of limited time in town, I am writing my blog at the ranch on my laptop. Then I will bring my laptop when we go into town and upload everything to the internet. That’s it for today. Tomorrow I think that the shotguns arrive so that I can go hunting. I am very excited.
Rancho “El Carmen” continued 6/19
As it turns out, the scraping of the tar was not enough, so we have to continue to burn off the tar until it stops which could be a while. The tar is definitely not healthy to be breathing all night, so unfortunately I have to sleep in the other room, which is just as nice, minus Olivia’s picture. Which reminds me, I should just move it, because I might be here for a while.
I hung out with the cooks for an hour before dinner, helped them cook, and dealt with the boy’s whining. We made “paty”s, which are basically pre-made hamburgers, and mashed potatoes and salad. We set aside a portion of potatoes for me and I mashed them up with oil and salt and pepper. I ended up eating the entire portion in the kitchen before dinner. I had two patys and some salad with Sean and Liam and Marcela. Tomorrow we might go and see the other house on the other side of the ranch. Could be fun.
Crocs and Ducks and Snakes, Oh My! 6/20
Today was a great day. The sun came out and it was the perfect temperature around the ranch. About 75 degrees. I was a bit worried that the whole 7 weeks down here would be cloudy and rainy like it had been.
After a breakfast of five eggs and some bread and when tutoring was done, I got out and went walking around the lagoon.
I saw something that looked like a strangely configured pile of mud on the side of the lagoon, but as I approached, it exploded in a flurry of water into the lake! A minute after a pair of eyes popped out of the water. Ahh! A croc! I saw three more crocodiles this morning on my little walk, and the biggest one that I saw was only about six feet long. I guess that’s still big enough to do some damage.
I also saw lots of ducks flying around all morning, but especially earlier, and many more around the lake. It should be great fun when Marcela brings home the shotgun tonight. But then, no one seems to know how to get the ducks out of the lake after you shoot them. I’m not going wading in there. Maybe I should stick to all of the doves and partridge that flush when we go walking or riding through the brush. Mentioning Marcela reminds me that you don’t know what she looks like yet.
After coming back to the house and eating a lunch of butternut squash, macaroni noodles, and leftover patys, I went to go see if Adolfo, the head gaucho needed help with any projects. I helped him to move big cedar light posts around the lawn. We had to dig a new hole for them, about four feet down, then dig them out and move them. They weighed a ton. I saw my first snake when we were clearing brush around one of the posts that needed to be moved. It was tiny, about from the tip of my thumb to the end of my forefinger in length. However this makes them no less venomous. We didn’t get a very good look at him though, he ran off pretty quickly.
Liam interrupted the work to ask me to take him over to the tanque at La Estancia Cautiva so that he could go swimming. The boys, las chicas (Adolfo’s daughters) and I all galloped over there on three horses. The boys are comfortable galloping with someone else on the back. More or less anyways.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a good place to read my book, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, but all of the trees were already occupied by ants. I ended up settling on the porch. I read for a while, then watched the swollen sun dip pink over the horizon. It was very relaxing. I only wish that I could have shared it with Olivia.
Marcela’s sister Camille and her son Tiago, and Marcela’s other friend Mariana came over. We sat in the parlor and had fine red wine (a 2001 La Paz Syrah-Malbec blend to be exact) and bread and cheese as we waited for dinner. I skipped the cheese of course. After a wonderful dinner of rice and pot roast, we retired to the salon to drink more wine and laugh and converse. We stayed up till past midnight. Our guests stayed the night.
One of the things that was brought up in the salon was the phantasma, or ghost on the ranch. Apparently Marcela heard a wheelbarrow going back and forth outside of her window all night a couple of years ago back when they didn’t even have one on the ranch. This scared me in my tired and slightly inebriated state. Back in my room after I blew out my lantern, I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Then, slowly, came a repetitive squeak of a wheelbarrow that needs to be oiled. My mind raced for an explanation, and it came pretty quickly. There is a windmill that pumps water from the ground between Marcela and my rooms. It squeaks just like a wheelbarrow would. I slept soundly after that, kept company by the noisy family of rodents that live in my thatched roof.
6/21
For the past three nights I have had dreams about high school. Dreams that I was failing a class and was not going to be able to graduate, or that I owed the school $300 and could not graduate. Strangely though, I could not actually grasp the concept of graduating in my dreams. I guess that that is because I cannot fully grasp it now. I cannot get my head around the idea that I will not be returning to Redwood in the fall. It has been such a huge part of my life. I am in a state of subconscious denial. Leaving the morning after couldn’t have helped with what I am feeling either. It just makes graduation seem more like a figment of imagination.
I have wanted to graduate, to move on, to get out of there, for as long as I can remember. But now that it is finally here, I don’t really know anymore. It’s not as though I have any choice in the matter anyways. I should stop brooding. But it all comes out at night.
After tutoring in the morning, I took the kids and their cousin Tiago for a horseback ride over to the kiosko to buy some candy. Those kids love their candy. I am getting good at horseback riding and taking care of all of the gear. The horse that I was riding today was beaten before they got him and so is both head-shy and skittish. He always moves when he knows that you are going to mount him. I barely got my foot out from underneath his hoof today. That could have been really bad.
For lunch we all ate empanadas. They are a delicious specialty of Argentina. Basically they are a dumpling of flaky dough with egg, meat, and onion inside. I ate nearly a dozen.
After having a session of arts and crafts with the kids, Marcela got out the long awaited shotgun. I put on my chaps and boots and borrowed hunting vest and was away. I hunted for about three hours. Basically you walk through the brush and shoot at anything that comes your way. I probably scared up 8 or 9 partridges and didn’t hit one. Man those things are fast. They fly low to the ground and are small too, about the size of a clay pigeon. I did, however, get three doves which we will be eating for dinner tonight.
It might look like a pigeon, but, if you squint your eyes just so, you will see that it’s a dove.
My hot water is working again, so I got to take a nice steamy shower with my friend Rosalina. She is a tree frog that lives in my bathroom. She usually hangs out around the toilet, but today she decided to join me inside the curtain.
It turns out that Marta- the cook- does not cook three doves. She needs four. I will go out early tomorrow morning to get another. Instead we had the most tender Argentine chicken that I have ever had. It was a huge roasted chicken, basted in ojus and surrounded by potatoes and yams. I helped cook by figuring out how to keep the oven shut. I used a table leg and a two-by-four.
6/22
I awoke at dawn from a restless sleep filled with dreams of my classmates back home. I pulled on my hunting clothes and went out into the night, towards crocodile lagoon. As the sun began to rise I could see the birds flying from where I crouched in my camouflage next to a patch of tall grass. There were birds of all kinds, but I wanted ducks. It started to rain. It was going to be tricky shooting, because the ducks had to be taken over land. The sets of reptilian eyes just above the surface of the water made wading for downed birds out of the question.
The first set of birds came, four of them. They circled about once then were coming to land in the water when I popped out and took one of them. The remaining three were gone in the blink of an eye. I retrieved my duck from the brush, threw it into my patch of tall grass and continued hunting.
I got two more ducks that morning. As I was preparing to leave without the fourth dove for Marta, a speck appeared on the horizon. I crouched low to the ground and looked out from under the brim of my hat. The speck turned into a dove, heading right for me. I waited until it was nearly overhead, closed the gun and fired. The dove crumpled and landed beside me in a cloud of feathers. It was like a message from God. I don’t know what he was saying with it, but he had really good timing.
When I came back to the house, there were ducks flying around all over the place. They sleep in the trees next to the house. I felt smart. Adolfo laughed and told me to get another duck so that Marta would cook them. I left my harvest at the base of a tree and loaded my last shell. All the ducks had already left by that time.
When I went back for the ducks, Adolfo asked me how many I had. I told him three and went to show him, but one was missing. Adolfo laughed and laughed and brought the other duck out from behind another tree. Afterwards he took this picture of me.
Everyone was still asleep when I returned from my hunt. After tutoring and lunch, Adolfo took me to Esquina so that I could finally post this blog.
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