After a very late Thursday night, it was somewhat miraculous the we managed to assemble in the hotel lobby with bags fully packed and minibar bills mostly paid. After everything was loaded on the bus, we set off for Santa Susana Ranch for a day of goucho-like activities. On the way, we stopped at a gas station gift shop where Hernan insisted they would have nice things. He hadn't steered us wrong yet, and it was easily the nicest shop with goods from Argentina that we encountered in the whole trip. And there was free WiFi. I can't tell you how important WiFi access came to be over the course of the trip.
We were greeted by (new) friends bearing empanadas and bebidas--two of our favorite things. After eating too many empanadas and spoiling our lunch, we were taken to the ranch house museum. I spend an eerily familiar face in a painting on the wall.
Scary...
After the tour, it was time to ride some horses. Some of the guys were a little acres, and some claimed to be allergic, but almost everyone went for a quick ride around the ranch.
It was time to stop riding and time to start eating, so we made our way to the large patio, where we were fed till bursting and then treated to some dancing and singing.
The pros weren't the only ones dancing!
After we started an impromptu conga line, we sang a couple of songs and then headed back outside to watch a gaucho show that mostly consisted of the cowboys speeding towards hanging straps on their horses, and trying to snag a small ring from the end of the strap with a pencil or chopstick.
Jellybean, our intrepid videographer, recorded the final few of us getting in our mandatory horse ride.
We bid farewell to the ranch, battled rush hour traffic to get to the airport, checked in without too much trouble, bid farewell to our intrepid tour guide, Dulce, and boarded the plane for home. We landed in Miami after too little sleep and staggered around for a bit, enjoying WiFi and dollars, until it was time to board our flight back to DC. We've just begun, as the captain likes to say, our initial descent into the Washington area. Then it's a short bus ride back to Charlottesville and the end of our fantastic spring break tour!
They're slightly more angelic when they're sleeping...
