Gauchos - Grrrr!

This picture-show video brings back a few memories of some of the toughest b'stards on the planet (take a look at their knives - they carry them everywhere, even sleep with them)! Lovely fellas, though, even the one who lived alone in a remote caravan on a super-remote ranch in Tierra del Fuego, an encampment that an American fishing buddy of mine, Tom, called Genghiz Khan's Camp, for it being literally surrounded by horse and cattle skulls (including a good number used for seating around the resident's campfire and asado (barbecue) pit) and the numerous skins of sheep, cattle and guanacos (wild llama) drying on stakes and fencelines. He showed us how he skinned a calf; it took him only a minute or so. Fantastic old fella who lived away from the rest of his fellow gauchos on the ranch after a killing a couple of them in knife fights in wine and over women or his long-lost mother's honour over the years. Great people; the Chilean and the Uruguayan equivalents are the same: men who, as a lady friend of mine who met a good number of them with me said, would defend you with their lives.


Fly Fishing | Blog | Photos | Podcasts | Travel | Gear | and More - Moldy Chum - Bryan Gregson Photography | 2013 Patagonia, Argentina |�Gaucho

I agree Paul.

the difference between now and 30..um years ago is that we were not carrying digital cameras.

My personal memories are all in my head or tied to items I collected during my 'travels' today all that is required is a power source and a few SD extreme cards.

Yes. Coincidentally the last photographs I ever took, the last time I used a camera, were taken in March 1997, of the annual late summer sheep sale held in the largest sheep-shearing shed in the world on a ranch just outside Rio Grande town on the island of Tierra del Fuego. There were a number of sheep-herding gauchos present moving the prize-winning Merino and Corriedale rams and ewes around from pen to pen then into the well-dressed ranch owners' trailers and trucks, and looking surprisingly newly shaven, clean and sober.

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Here is that "shed". Seems that they do tours of it now.

Estancia María Behety

Some shed.