Dia del Campo

Dia del Campo was an excursion with my program, ISA. They first took us to Lujan, a city outside of Buenos Aires with a famous basillica. I was not overly impressed by the basillica as in Spain I've seen enough cathedrals to last for a while. I was more impressed by the coffee shop beside the basillica as it was 9 am, which is early by Argentine standards.
Next we went to a 1860's estancia, complete with gauchos, horses and most importantly, peacocks.

First we walked around the estancia, which is similar to a ranch. The estancia house was preserved from the turn of the century and showed how it would have looked at the turn of the century. As cattle has long been a central part of the Argentine economy, landowners of estancias similar to this one had lots of influence. This influence declined under Peron. The gaucho culture is central to Argentine identity, presenting a contrast to the cosmopolitan Porteno (resident of Buenos Aires). All of the estancia workers were dressed as gauchos, of course with the infamous gaucho pants.

We got to ride horses, which was in itself a let down as we just went in circle. It was great to at least be around horses though.
Afterwards, we had an asado. This is Argentine for BBQ and directly translates as 2.5 hr banquet with about 4 courses of meat. They gave the vegetarians (my roommate and me) pretty gross pasta. For a bit, I was worried that Argentina was finally going to fufill a long held worry of me not liking what was served. Then they brought out grilled veggies, which were amazing! The grilled red pepper was almost like candy it was so sweet. Argentina definitely does not deserve its reputation as a vegetarian wasteland.

The gauchos demonstrated traditional gaucho dancing, which consisted of a lot of foot stamping and twirling. Then, completely stuffed, we went outside to watch gauchos perform games on horseback such as jousting a canter to put a spear through a little ring. They brought along the five year that had been running along all day. He was fine on the horse, mainly because he did not want to be left behind.