Los Gauchos de Roldán
www.walterroldan.com
URUGUAY
Gaucho Uruguay Live the Gaucho life in Uruguay's
wide-open spaces
Story and photos by REMY SCALZA / Special Contributor to
"The Dallas Morning News"
FLORES, Uruguay
Even Charles Darwin was smitten by the gauchos.
Notes from his 1833 expedition to South America excitedly describe a rare breed of cowboys discovered riding the open plains, "long, black hair curling down their backs ... daggers at their waists" and weather-beaten guitars in tow.
For centuries, the itinerant gauchos roamed the South American countryside, toiling on ranches, serenading small-town women and inspiring folk legends about their footloose way of life.
Gaucho fine horsemen
Now, growing numbers of working farms, known in Uruguay as estancias , are offering mo
dern-day explorers the chance to experience the gaucho lifestyle for themselves, with a few co
ntemporary comforts thrown in.
"The gaucho was a wanderer, a free spirit," says Raúl Onetto, silver-haired owner of San Martín del Yi, a 4,500-acre estancia that attracts visitors from as far away as India and Japan.
But San Martín is no mere country inn. While saddling up guests' horses in the stable out back, owner Raúl proudly ticks off the ranch's stats: 1,100 sheep, 850 head of cattle and a crew of a half-dozen gauchos to keep the place running.
Today, as usual, there's work to be done. From his horse, Raúl surveys a flock of fuzzy lambs – a veritable sea of bad perms – that needs to be corralled and sheared before the week is out.
"The gauchos were loners," Raúl explains, opening a fence gate and letting the flock flood past. "They'd ride from estancia to estancia, working when they needed a little money for tobacco."
Raúl slows to round up a straggling lamb, burdened under the weight of its heavy coat. By now, morning clouds have burned off, and the sun sends up a fine mist from the plains. Apart from the soft thud of hooves, the scene is silent.
It was on lonely plains like these where, in the early 1700s, the gaucho was born, the progeny of Spanish colonists and local Indians. The mixed-race gauchos played Spanish guitars but wore ponchos, smoked tobacco but also sipped mate, a tea brewed from a Pampas shrub.
But above all, they were outcasts. Rejected by conquistadors and conquered alike, the gauchos mounted up and took to the plains, living off the land and herding cattle to earn spending money. Gauchos "had no land of their own," Raúl explains, helping a guest off her horse. "They weren't attached to anything
