Javy's Adventures on Horseback

Javy, April 27, 2015

We went to an estancia last week. It was great! We went every day on horseback to round up sheep and cows!

In the  mornings, we went to the corral.  We got our helmets because the gaucho wanted us to be safe. If we fell off the horse, our heads could be mush. But the best thing was we got to wear gaucho boots!

We saddled up our horses, but we had to do it by ourselves. We first put on two layers of pads so the horse wouldn't feel uncomfortable. The gauchos helped us get the saddles on because, as you know, we are very short, and we had big horses. Then we put the bridle on by opening up the horse's mouth to make it bite the metal bit and then we put the straps on over the horse's ears.

We went with our horses and started to ride. It was a good feeling, and it was fun when the horse started to move. I felt like I was very powerful to be riding a big horse. I could control where it went, when I wanted it to go, and how fast it went.  When I wanted to turn left, I would pull the reins left and it would go left. If I wanted to go right, I would pull right. If I wanted to go fast, I would tap  the horse's stomach with my boot and it would go fast. When I wanted to stop, I pulled back on the reins.

When we got off  the horse, we would take the harness off and then we would take off the two pads and the saddle. Then we would get a brush and start brushing the horse. Then we needed to pat the horse goodbye and set it free. I loved to ride and I hope to ride again some day!

Estancia Panagea

Marilyn, March 26, 2015

We've had some pretty amazing experiences in Uruguay so far, but this week's just might top them all. Teo, Javy, and I spent three days at a wonderful place called Estancia Panagea. Our friends the Gimnig family, who visited us last month, discovered it and highly recommended it to us after their stay there. It turned out to be all they had promised and more.

Estancias are large ranches, and in the pampas of Uruguay and Argentina, are usually home to herds of cattle and sheep, and also homes to their herders, the gauchos (and sometimes gauchas). Estancia Panagea is a working ranch that welcomes visitors to come and spend a few days, joining in as much of the work as they choose. Panagea's owner, Juan Manuel, is a third-generation rancher, as well as a veterinarian. He's also a great teacher, travel advisor, and armchair philosopher. He and the gaucho who works for him, Bilingua (so nicknamed because he speaks both Spanish and Portuguese), possess what must be a pretty unusual set of skills that enable them to both run a productive and profitable ranch, and at the same time cheerfully shepherd a bunch of novices through all the work that the ranch demands. Bilingua's wife works as the cook, serving up hearty meals of gaucho food, including rich mutton stews and savory rice dishes. Juan's family also lives at the estancia, although we did not have the pleasure of meeting them, since they were traveling.

From all we had heard and read, we were anticipating a great experience at Panagea. What we could not have anticipated was our luck in being there at the same time as another visitor, Elin, a mechanical engineer and adventurer from Sweden. Her visit to Panagea came in the middle of a several-week trek across South America. She was wonderful, genuinely enjoying my boys and their antics, and happy to share her considerable horse knowledge with us greenhorns. We bonded quickly and shared meaningful conversation over meals and magical moments taking in all the estancia had to offer.

Our guesthouse, painted with the flags of previous guests' home countries

Our journey started on Monday afternoon with a 5-hour bus ride straight north from Montevideo to Tacaruarembó. Elin was on the same bus, sitting a couple rows ahead of us, but of course at that point we didn't know we'd be spending the next few days with her. Juan met us at the bus station, loaded us and our luggage into his truck, and drove us another hour into the countryside to reach Panagea. The sun was setting in all its gold and pink glory as we drove through the vast, empty grasslands, giving us a glimpse of the wonder that awaited us. We arrived at Pangea with a bit of daylight to spare, and were able to settle into our simple and comfortable rooms before supper. Juan joined us for the meal, and we all enjoyed getting to know each other, sharing travel experiences, talking politics, and exchanging perspectives on the world.

Even though the boys and I have read in our Uruguayan history book about the electrification of the  campo or countryside years ago, such progress has not yet extended as far as Panagea. Electricity is available only for a few hours each evening, when the generator is turned on. Juan let us know that it would turn off at 10 p.m. sharp, with no warning given. Teo and Javy and I snuggled into our beds and began our bedtime reading (Secret of the Andes, in preparation for our trip to Cusco next month), and all of a sudden, in the middle of a paragraph, the lights went out and all of us were surprised by how very, very dark it was. We opted not to light the candles that were provided for us, and instead let the darkness and sleep overtake us.

After breakfast the next morning, we met Juan and Bilingua in the corral and were assigned our horses. With 74 horses to choose from, Juan has a horse appropriate for just about any rider, I imagine. I was given Rebelde ("Rebel"), Javy rode Infierno, and Teo was matched with Tormenta. Although their names were not very reassuring, they turned out to be gentle and patient animals, and we gained confidence as we rode across the grassland, following Juan and Bilingua to the paddocks where we would round up 300 of the ranch's 1800 sheep. Javy shares his thoughts on riding the horses here, and Teo has written more about our morning herding and vaccinating the sheep here.

Juan helps Javy get situated on his horse, Infierno

Midday is lunch and siesta time at the estancia, and we enjoyed relaxing in the hammocks that Juan hung for us in the trees near the house. In the afternoon, we saddled up new horses, giving the morning horses a break, and, per Juan's protocol, allowing us to get broader experience by riding different animals. After escorting the sheep back to their field, our next task was to bring in 200 of the 1100 cattle.  The cattle proved to be more cantankerous than the sheep, and required a lot of whooping and hollering as we rounded them up. Not surprisingly, Teo and Javy turned out to be pretty good whoopers and hollerers. 

After an hour or so of herding, we had them all back at the corral, and we guided them into a large holding pen. Next, Bilingua gave the boys flags made of long sticks with white bags tied to the ends. He had them help divide the herd into smaller groups, and then, with much flag waving and prodding, drive one group at a time into a smaller holding area. Additional whooping and hollering was involved. From that smaller area, eight or so cows at a time were led, pushed, prodded, shoved into a narrow chute where they would be more or less immobile and Juan could tag the ears of the young ones and castrate the male calves. Javy and Teo assisted by handing Juan the tags. Elin's job was to open and close the gate at the end of the chute as each cow was released, to allow access to one field or another, thereby sorting them and isolating a couple of older cows, who we later escorted to the old cow retirement field.

Tagging a calf's ear

Elin as gatekeeper

After a hard day's work, we enjoyed another delicious dinner and pleasant conversation. The boys took advantage of the evening's electricity and watched some Spanish cartoons on television. We got to bed with enough time to do some more reading, but before we had gotten through many pages, Javy was sound asleep. Too tired to get up and turn the lights out, I decided I'd just wait for them to go out on their own, but I was out before the lights were.

Wednesday was much like Tuesday, except that we felt a little more experienced and confident with the riding and the work. We were with cows all day, rounding them up, assisting with vaccination, bringing in mother cows with their calves, separating out young males that would be sold, helping with blood tests, and watching Juan check a few cows for pregnancy. He did this by inserting his gloved arm up to his shoulder into the cow's rectum and feeling for a fetus. Needless to say, this was a fascinating procedure for the boys to witness. We also painted a stripe on the backs of the cows that Juan planned to sell, and watched a bit squeamishly as he cut the horns off of one calf.

Painting cows

Our last job of the day was to escort some of the cows back to their new paddock. With that task completed, Elin, Teo, Javy, and I hurried our horses to a rise on the other side of the property to view the sunset. It was so peaceful, so breathtakingly beautiful, that it will be awhile before I can watch another sunset and not feel a bit of a longing to be back there on that little hill, overlooking the grazing sheep, waiting for the quiet, starry nighttime to descend.

Teo took this beautiful photo of Elin at sunset

Thursday morning's job was to scour a very large and hilly field for the dozen or so horses who were running free there, and to escort them back to the corral so that they could begin their work shift and relieve those that had been ridden the past several days. They knew the routine and came obediently enough. When we later saddled them up and began riding, though, it seemed that they were having a bit of trouble transitioning into their workweek, maybe like many of us feel on Monday morning after a weekend free of restraint. My horse in particular seemed to have its own idea of where it wanted to go, but I eventually got it to follow my directions, and felt pretty good about that accomplishment. Mother cows and their male calves needed to be rounded up, but what with our wandering horses and our inability to confidently distinguish the male calves from the female ones, we weren't much help. Mostly we just enjoyed being out on the range on a beautiful morning while Juan, Bilingua, and Tarzan the dog did all the real work.

Over our last lunch together, Elin and I exchanged contact information and talked about future travel plans, then we loaded into Juan's van to return to the bus station. We arrived just in time for the boys and me to catch the next double-decker bus to Montevideo, and with an extra stroke of luck, were assigned the front seats on the top level, just where they had hoped we'd be. Though eager to get home and to see Gene, we all felt a little melancholy as the bus pulled out of the station, a little sad to say goodbye to new friends and to end such a marvellous adventure. Maybe we'll just have to go back!

Riding through a eucalyptus grove

This family of rheas, or ñandus, have made their home at Panagea.  Rhea dads take care of the chicks!

Another photo by Teo

My gauchitos!

Vaccinating Sheep

Teo, April 25, 2015

Javy and I have just come back from an estancia.  An estancia is a ranch that raises mostly cows and sheep.  Instead of cowboys, gauchos take care of the ranch.  Our mom will be writing about the estancia in a longer post.  One thing we did there was vaccinating sheep.

Javy and Mom and I woke up kind of early and got our breakfast and we went to where we would saddle up our horses.  There was a Swedish woman, Elin, who was there also.  After we saddled up our horses, we went out onto the paddocks with the gauchos and we looked for sheep to herd up.  It was kind of fun herding sheep.  The sheep were very easy to get because they would all squeezed together in a little bunch.  We could just yell and whistle and ride behind them.  There was a dog who helped out and barked at the sheep if they got out of line.

We brought the sheep back and we put them in three little pens.

One of the gauchos was checking for infections and if he found an infection, he would put pink stuff on it.

Next, Javy and I went into the second little pen and we yelled at the sheep and got them to move so that they would go into the first pen.

From there, the sheep went into a chute and the gaucho would take a needle and stick it in each one.

They baaaa-ed and they jumped sometimes if they were scared of the needle. Then Elin opened the hatch and they went out into a field. Awhile later, we got on our horses and herded the sheep up again took them back to their fields. I thought doing all of this was pretty cool!

Mueso del Mar

Teo, April 16, 2015

Three days ago, Javy and I and our mom went to Punta del Este for our surfing lesson.

After we were done, we got on a bus at the bus terminal and drove over an undulating bridge over to a town called La Barra.  It was very fun going over the bridge. (Photo from Wikipedia is here.)

We went to a gift shop to ask directions to a museum called Museo del Mar. The man who told us directions also let us keep our backpacks at the gift shop because we were going to have to walk a mile there and back. When we got to the museum, we walked through the door and we thought it was pretty cool because there were so many things to look at. Javy was kind of scared of a big stuffed sea lion.

We saw a moon fish, and we watched a little video that was in English about coral reefs and the animals there. We saw lots of shells and creepy old postcards. One showed a guy with nails in his head, and it said "Santa Maria." There were four big whale skeletons and there was a pirate room where there were lots of pirate things and some model pirates. The museum had about a thousand different things.  It was very fun to look through.

We crossed the road to the insectarium and we went inside. We saw thousands of bugs all in cases lining the walls. We saw preying mantises, scorpions, and butterflies, but mostly beetles. It was pretty cool to look at.

Then we walked back to the gift shop to get our bags. We got on a bus and it was fun going over the bridge again. When we got to the bus terminal, we got tickets for the bus home and bought sandwiches for the road. We got on the bus and sat for an hour or so. The bus dropped us off in Atlántida. Then we walked home and went to sleep after a big day.

Gone Fishin'

Javy, April 16, 2015

Two days ago, I went surf fishing with my dad. I was thrilled to go fishing! I was looking forward to it, and I was waiting and waiting and waiting for my dad to get back from work. When he finally came home, I was so worn out from waiting, I felt like I had grown a beard on my chin.

So, I was happy and I asked him, "Can we go fishing?" And he said, "Not now, I need to eat something." I felt like my head was going to split in half. Waiting ten minutes for my dad to eat felt like a year or two.

But let's get back to fishing. So, we were on the beach. It was very windy and dark. It's very good to fish at nighttime because some species of fish wait until it's dark to eat. We found a place to fish. We didn't have a pole, but we had a bucket. Our neighbor loaned it to us. The bucket was used for wrapping the line around. We got out the shrimp bait and we hooked it on the hook and then we put a rubber band on the shrimp so it wouldn't fall off in the ocean. Then I went far away so I wouldn't be hit by the hook. The way you get the shrimp out into the water is you swing and swing the line until you're ready to let go and it goes right into the blue sea. And you wait. The line has a big weight at the end so the ocean doesn't sweep it away.

So then we waited and waited and waited. I jogged, I sat, I annoyed my dad, I talked, and then I took a little walk. I watched as a bolt of lightning streaked down from the sky.  I think Thor was mad at us for fishing. Then I came back to see if my dad had a fish. I was excited but, no luck. Then my dad asked if I wanted to try. I asked if I could throw the bait in. But if you know me, you know that I am very short. I'm not tall enough to throw it. So we left the line out there in the water and I held it awhile, waiting, and then I felt a little tug. But then I made a mistake of pulling back. My dad told me, "Never pull back, because it will tell the fish, 'This food is crazy, get me out of here,' and it will swim away." The right way to do it is to let the fish feel it and get used to it, and bite it and swallow it. When the fish has swallowed it, you yank back.  And voilá, you got a fish.

But me? That's a different story. I'm not a good fisher yet.  But I, Javier McGinnis, will catch a fish in Uruguay! Or at least I hope so.

I enjoyed talking with my dad and having a nice time on the beach. We left and went home and told the sorrowful news to Mom and Teo. Today, we are going to try again. If I catch one, I will tell you.

Waiting for Voom

Marilyn, April 10, 2015

I've been parenting long enough that I sometimes think of my life in terms of Dr. Seuss books. Lately, the Cat in the Hat has been on my mind, or more precisely, his buddies Little Cats A, B, C, D, and so forth. Remember those 26 cats, each progressively smaller, who live in the hats of the cats who directly precede them in the alphabet? They are Troublemakers, those cats, with a capital T. They mess up everything, and moreover, they delight in doing so. The more of them that pop out of their hats, the worse things get, with each little cat adding to the confusion that the last one created. I've had the sense lately that my life is a whole lot like those little cats. Everything I try to do to put things in order ends up instead compounding the chaos. I get my head around how a day or a week or a Trip to Uruguay is going to go, and something happens to confound all my plans. Each new plan to set things right is an invitation for miscommunication, disappointment, disaster, and every time my day again dissolves into disarray, I imagine another little mischievous cat popping out of a hat, with no goal other than to create havoc in my life.

If you had asked me, I would have told you that The Plan I started out with at the beginning of this adventure wasn't all that ambitious. In fact, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of heeding the advice of a friend whose many years' experience abroad qualified her to share her wisdom. She warned me shortly before we left the U.S. to be careful about my expectations. "Expectations," she told me, "are the seeds of resentment." So The Plan I arrived with was, I thought, appropriately scaled down, and assuredly resentment-proof. By this point in our Uruguayan adventure, The Plan called for me knowing my way around the language and the town, having a few Spanish-speaking friends to socialize with regularly, and being involved in a community activity or two. Modest enough, wouldn't you say? I had expected Teo and Javy to have made friends by now also, to be speaking Spanish well, and to be enjoying some sort of regular classes or sports teams. Too optimistic? Apparently.  

Even though I have recently met a couple of kind women who are happy to let me practice Spanish with them, I have to admit that, in general, The Plan has failed, especially for my boys. There are a number of reasons for this failure. Suffice it to say that I have not found following through on commitments to be a strong cultural trait of Uruguayans, nor boldness in embracing new situations a strong personal trait of my boys.  From a sociological viewpoint, I find our lack of ability to form relationships here rather interesting.  From a personal and parental standpoint, I find it terribly frustrating, and I find myself on the verge of that resentment that I had been warned about. But with plenty of practice in my life dismantling failed plans and restructuring them into new ones, I have evaluated what other opportunities besides friendships and Spanish fluency the next two and a half months might hold.  

The obvious answer is travel, and that has become Plan B. There are still a few places within Uruguay that I've been wanting to visit, and we certainly have no day-to-day obligations to tie us down in Atlántida. In addition, before the end of May, if we intend to obey the law, we have to leave the country to renew our visas. And if we have to leave the country, why not do it right and go someplace really fabulous, someplace we've all always wanted to visit? Throwing financial caution to the wind, we booked flights for mid-May to Cusco in Peru, to visit Machu Picchu, the ancient city of the Inca, high up in the Andes Mountains.  Part of planning for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure involves getting in better physical shape so that we won't be disabled by altitude sickness. I've started a stair-climbing regimen that should boost my oxygen-carrying capacity in no time.

But that still leaves more than a month before and after to fill with meaningful activity, or at least with activity that keeps the boys and me sane and liking each other a bit. Plan B, therefore, includes Little Plans for as many short trips as we can fit into these weeks. This week was a good week to launch some of these Little Plans, since Gene was out of town doing some field research. So Monday morning, the boys and I took a bus to Montevideo, and then for the first time headed west from there. We enjoyed a lovely 24 hours in the town of Colonia. In our study of Uruguayan history, we had learned about this town that changed hands from Spanish to Portuguese back and forth for 150 years, and that at one point was burned to the ground by the Spanish just so the Portuguese would have nothing to reconquer. Colonia is often described by Uruguayan as muy tranquila and indeed it was tranquil for us. We spent Tuesday morning meandering its cobblestone streets, wandering through its museum of indigenous history, climbing its lighthouse steps, and agonizing over which souvenirs to buy at the gift shops. That afternoon, a bus ride back to Montevideo and then to Atlántida had us home by dark. Little Plan A: implemented successfully with no shenanigans from little cats.  I should have known better than to let down my caution.

The next plan-within-a-plan was a return trip yesterday to Punta del Este for what would probably be the boys' last surfing lesson before the weather becomes too cold. I called the bus company and made reservations on a bus that was to pass our bus stop around 9:15, getting us to Punta del Este with plenty of time before their 11:00 lesson. Lunches and beach gear packed, we were at the stop early, just to make sure we didn't miss our bus. Two busses going to Punta del Este stopped at our stop, but I resolutely waited for the bus on which we had reserved seats. By 9:35, I had just about given up on it. But here it came, barreling down the highway, too fast for me to read its destination until it was almost past us. I frantically signalled it, but it paid me no mind and continued on its way. Left with too little time for a new Little Plan to get there by 11:00, I texted the instructor and instead made Little Plan C to postpone the lesson until today. I was terribly disappointed, not so much because of the missed lesson, but because I've been here this long and have yet to figure out the bus system. Seeing my disappointment, the boys set to work as soon as they got home to make me a wonderful card, which raised my spirits a bit. Then, like unexpectedly benevolent little cats popping out of hats, other plans materialized and we had an enjoyable enough day, with a bike ride to our town's Thursday market, a bit of exercise in anticipation of Cusco, and a walk on the beach for me with a neighbor and her dogs. 

We were not expecting Gene home until very early this morning, but as it happened, we had misunderstood his plans, and he arrived late last night, making it possible for him to accompany us to Punta del Este this morning for the postponed lesson. Up early to pack lunches and beach gear again, all four of us headed back to the bus stop, determined to get on whatever bus was going there. We signalled the first one we saw, and it stopped. But, no, we were told, we need to wait for the next one, which would get us there more directly. That one stopped at our signal as well and accepted a woman traveling alone, but we were told that there were no more seats. No matter that every single bus we've taken in this country has had passengers standing in the aisles.  We were assured that another bus would come along shortly. It did not. Out popped Little Plan D, and we decided that we'd rent a car, which actually wouldn't cost much more than the four round-trip bus fares. Thirty minutes later, starting out for the highway, pop!  Surf instructor responds to my text saying he can't wait for us, we need to reschedule again for a different day. We feebly pop out the next Little Plan and decide that instead of a day at the beach at Punta del Este, we'll make use of the car we just needlessly rented and go climb a mountain. If nothing else, it'll be good training for Cusco, we say. About that time, Teo announces that he feels sick. Short on sympathy and having reached the limit of our flexibility, we load him in the car anyway and set out. An hour later, we are rewarded with a boy who feels better, a challenging climb on a beautiful day, incredible views from the top of the mountain, and some really valuable family time together.

Do you remember Little Cat Z, who finally pops out of Little Cat Y's hat? He's too small to see (so don't try, you can not), but he has some pretty powerful stuff in his own microscopic hat.  He has something called Voom. Voom is so hard to get, you never saw anything like it, I bet. Voom cleans up anything, clean as can be. Then (the Big Cat) yelled, "Take your hat off now, Little Cat Z!" And the voom, it went VOOM And, oh boy, what a VOOM! Immediately, all the chaos is corrected, all the turmoil is calmed, all the havoc put in order, all the Little Cats obediently returned to their places.

I imagine that before we land back home in Atlanta, we will have gone though numerous alphabets of plan changes. But maybe in the end, all of our messy, ragged, stomped-in-the-dirt expectations for our time here will clean up pretty well. By the time we get to the last Little Plan Z, maybe we will have realized that we have some magical voom of our own that will turn at least most of the disappointments over unmet friends and unmastered grammar and lack of bus savvy and missed surfing lessons into sweet memories of making a card to comfort Mom and biking to the market and walking on the beach and practicing Spanish with a kind neighbor and climbing a mountain on a gorgeous day. I'm not planning on it, you understand. I'm not expecting it. But there is enough Seuss in me to know that voom is possible, and that might be just enough to get me through the next several hundred changes in plans.

Just to help these memories along, here are some photos of our adventures this week.

Boys on the balcony of our hotel in Colonia

Enjoying the hotel pool

In front of a (closed) museum

WIth a local dog in front of the old city wall

Same boys, same dog, this time on the drawbridge

Colonia's lighthouse -- we could see Buenos Aires from the top!

Javy descending the steps inside the lighthouse.  

In front of one of the several craft shops

Beautiful city square

Lovely walk to the bus station in Colonia

Teo at the beginning of our hike at Cerro Pan de Azucar.  The cross on the top of the mountain is our destination.

Up we go!

Halfway up

We made it!

Spiral staircase inside cross

Graffiti inside the cross

View from inside cross

Looking out