Sheila’s take: After a brief handshake he said ‘Can you pull my car, it’s not starting’! That was the start of a very unique hard to describe, 2 days at the Estancia.
So whilst Suresh (Titus) was pulling his car, Marc-Antoine, who by the way is French, decided that I ‘Madame’ would be better off in the house. So I was taken in and on the way he told me that we were very lucky to be thereat this time because tomorrow he was “building the ship”!! My mind did some calisthenics as I tried to process this information.
We went in and I was introduced to a tall slim, beautiful woman with long blonde hair, boots and manicured nails, his wife Isabelle (also French).
The house was decorated and filled with artefacts, skulls of various animals, sheep horses etc and skins of animals as rugs and carpets and wall hangings.
There was Isabelle’s dog Pepe who had come with her from France and two baby kittens who promptly climbed into my lap and settled down as I gingerly sat on the couch. Isabelle brought mint tea and biscuits and sat down to chat. Suresh came in saying that the car was not starting and he settled down to have some tea when MA came along and suggested that he take our car battery and put it in his car to see if it would start. We both stared at him and then Suresh said ok very hesitantly ………. And they both left again!
Isabelle was a model in her younger days and had 4 kids and a very rich husband who passed away. She met Marc- Antoine and decided to come to Argentina at his invitation. They are both around 60 years old. They spend the summer in Argentina from around November to March and then go back to France for the rest of the year.
MA and Suresh returned. They had managed to jump start his car and he was going to the ‘nearby’ village which is Gobernadore Gregores, 40km away to hire some Gauchos. He was not “building a ship’” but “ bringing in the sheep” His accent and my hearing !!!!!
Evening came and with it Marc- Antoine returned with a young Italian couple in their mid twenties, in tow, who were the other house guests apart from us. We all settled down for dinner with wine and olives. Marc- Antoine went into the kitchen and came back with 6-7 slabs of lamb meat on a tray.
He proceeded to build a fire in the fire place and then grilled the meat on the fire.
This was served with polenta and vegetables and salad, followed by a desert of ginger pudding and panettone.
I must talk about the lamb. It took me by real surprise as it was delicious given that there was no seasoning except a little salt and had no lamb smell and was nothing like the lamb in England. They attributed it to the wild and organic way the lamb was grown in Argentina.
The history of sheep farming started with the English. A few sheep were originally brought to Argentina by the English from Falklands. The sheep multiplied and thrived so well that it soon became an industry.
Marc-Antoine as a young man had trained as a lawyer and was working in a firm in France. After 5 years he felt that, that profession would destroy him and so he took off on a long sabbatical planning to travel on horse back from Puntas Arenas (South America) to Alaska. He reached Patagonia fell in love with the land and stayed put eventually buying the estancia and building a farm. 30 years down the line he had properties in France and Argentina which kept him very busy.
The young Italian couple were travelling before their wedding which is next year after which they plan to settle down in Milan. We all chatted into the night and then retired for the night.
Our cabana or shack was a rickety wooden 2 storey affair with us upstairs and the Italians downstairs.
The howling wind seeped in through the cracks and gaps chilling us as we tried to get into our pyjamas. There were no ‘luxuries’ like a heater or rather there was one which did not work. Downstairs they thought we would come crashing through every time we moved!
Sometimes being deaf is a blessing and I slept through the night. Suresh was kept awake by a dog howling all night.
It transpired that one of the Gaucho’s dogs had got his chain caught in the crack between the wooden floor near our shack and was crying to be released.
He was released in the morning and came to no harm!!
Morning came and MA said the Gauchos had come and had left at dawn to round up the sheep. He was going on his motorbike to assist them but his motorbike would not start and Suresh (Titus) was called to aid again and this time Suresh was chuffed to bits!!
Mission accomplished MA was gone. After breakfast and bidding the Italians fond farewell we were taken by Isabelle to their barn where some of the farm activities happen. This was another surreal space that needs to be seen!! It was sectioned into several different spaces. One space held a motorbike and tools of every description. Another space had a long wooden table with chairs around. All around the barn were animal skins hung all at different stages of drying. Puma skin is very expensive. The smell hung in the air. The walls were lined by thousands of empty wine and alcohol bottles. There two smaller penned off areas and one of them had a little lamb who was found motherless and brought in by the gaucho. Isabelle brought a bottle of milk and the grabbed the lamb as she tried to escape and fed her.
After this we returned to our shack to work on our blog which had taken a backseat in all the excitement.
We worked for awhile and then Suresh shot up as he could hear the sheep and the Gauchos coming.
The excitement had begun. We grabbed our phones and cameras and ran down the rickety steps of our shack to the bleating of sheep, barking dogs and dust rising thick into the air.
Gauchos on horses were galloping around herding the sheep into a large enclosure.
They were then moved into two separate enclosures separating the adults and mothers from the baby lambs. This resulted in a lot of baaaa, cries from mothers and babies.
The gauchos proceeded to mark the boy lambs with blue and girl lambs with red ink. All this took a lot of time and it was late into the afternoon when the important business began.
Which was snipping the ears on both sides to identify the sheep as belonging to to this farm. The sheep jerked in pain or fear and a little blood spilt. Next came castrating the boy lambs by putting a tight elastic around the testes. (wether- castrated male sheep)) The reason for doing this is so that the ewes can all be impregnated at the same time by a few chosen rams and all the lambing can happen in May.
Finally the cutting of the tails of the girl lambs. This has to be done as the weeing and pooing is through the same orifice and this form a gluey mass at the opening obstructing it if there is a tail preventing it from falling away. Also mating becomes difficult.
All this was discussed in detail at the dining table the previous day. Marc-Antoine even suggested that Suresh maybe interested in helping out seeing that he was a surgeon!! Suresh stayed behind the camera and did not volunteer.
When all this complicated procedures were completed the traumatised sheep was returned to the pen with the other sheep, reunited with their mothers.
On the other side of the farm a large sheep was taken away by the gauchos and slaughtered both for their dinner and ours. Reward for a hard days work.
The day had come to an end and as we sat down, kittens in our laps sipping our wine and munching on olives, I was contemplating whether I should become a vegetarian.
In a distance Marc- Antoine saw a car turn into the dirt road and a family of Russians were headed this way- house guests for the night.
During dinner the sun was setting and we all ran out to take pictures!
Titus: As we left Marc-Antoine was counting sheep tails, along with a Gaucho and Pepe supervising? Number of sheep tails and number of elastic used for castration tells him how many new lambs were born in a season. He came to bid us goodbye: He shook my hand with his bloodied hand with a firm grip.. his blue eyes twinkling .. hope you had a good-experience at Santa Thelma?
We definitely had, I said, looking at my hand.. (Sheila had very strategically positioned herself 10 metres away and waved him goodbye.).. Thinking of the long drive ahead with sheep tail blood on my hands, I decided to surreptiously run up to the room and wash it thoroughly with soap and water..
Back on the Mesita for the next destination.. El Chalten.
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