Week 4 — The Pampas & a Visitor

This week was anchored by maybe the best day of Emma and Mae’s life…the first time they rode real horses! On Saturday, their Aunt Marina and cousin Cassandra arrived for a week of adventures. So this week Emma and Mae (and possibly Will) have decided to highlight the trip out to the Pampas, which are the fields north of the city, where cows and horses are abundant. And then share a few pictures from the arrival of their aunt and cousin. A few other fun things happened, which are below.

Time is going fast here. I think 2 months is the exact right amount of time, enough to be able to really feel like we are down here, but also not too long. We’re excited to be home soon as well. Can’t believe we are now over the half way point…

On to the week. Enjoy!

The Pampas in Two Parts — The Pampas are the fields north of Buenos Aires, known for their lush lands, and cows and horses. We took a day trip with our friends (the D’Ignazios) which was possibly the greatest full day adventure we’ve had. The trip first took us to a Gaucho town called San Antonino De Areco, where we saw artists, silversmiths, a candy maker, and other interesting parts of hte town, and then we headed to an Estate (estancia) for horse riding, lunch, and traditional dancing. We’ll tell this in multiple parts:

Part 1. San Antonio De Areco (The Town) — The town is a throwback to Gaucho culture, and was our first stop on the tour. Was interesting to learn about how life was, and is, in the town. Girls loved the artist more than anything, and the local confectioner, which we have no pictures of cause mom and dad were busy dealing with an overtired third child out in the streets…

Girls got horses painted on their hands and love them…until they cried when they washed their hands.

A real time painting…and here is the crew after arriving at the Estancia.

Estancia Orme (The Estate) — This place was amazing. A huge estate with some 90 horses and 250 cows. Plus seven homes and just amazing scenery. Horse riding, cerveza, beautiful open space, a lunch like no other, dancing, and some crazy horse rituals that Gauchos do (see below :-). It’s also has rooms you can stay in, with pools. We are going back! Words don’t do it justice, so here are some pictures. Emma and Mae still can’t believe they rode horses for an hour, out in the open fields, with no one holding the reins!

Kids and horses…2 of the 100,000 pics we took of horses

Pics of our lunch and the surroundings…food was amazing!

We also learned the local dance of the region. Or we tried to. Emma was too embarrassed. And Will thought we were funny

Lastly, here’s a Gaucho doing some horse training ritual…I wish I had a pic of Mae watching this.

Auntie Marina and Cassandra Arrive — To cap off the week, we welcomed Marina and Cassandra, who arranged a last minute trip down for the week. We had a quite day Saturday and a Sunday city bus tour adventure. We’ll detail their visit more next week…but for now, here are some of the early highlights.

We took a bus tour on Sunday, which we liked more than anticipated

Girls spent hours opening LoL dolls courtesy of Aunt and Cousin!

More pics from our adventure day!

And to sign off, here are some more fun pics around Palermo…which we continue to explore.

Love Emma, Mae, Will, Amy & Paul

Can you stand it? Will loves the game where he’s buried in pillows…

The two pics on the left are of the post office. It’s like the deli or DMV, and they don’t call numbers twice! It was crazy…and more Mae waiting for her meal and the girls trying to grow taller.