Larger, calmer horses approached, their riders watchful of the pony’s panic. They hemmed him in with their bulk, held him, restrained, contained. A gaucho slid from a compatriot’s horse into the pony’s saddle, adjusted his weight, pressing his high, heeled boots into the pony’s belly, held the loose reins in one hand and grasping their long ends in the other.
With a shout, the blindfold was whipped off, the bridle released, and the pony shot away from the post leaping and twisting as the gaucho dug in his heels, shouted and whipped furiously at the pony’s sides with long ends of the leather reins.
Within a few short minutes, a horn sounded and the gaucho slid gracefully to the ground and raised his arms to the shouts and whistles of the gathered crowd as the pony leaped in his own victory dance towards the far end of the corral.
The shadows were growing long, on the rolling plains of Cerro Colorado. It must have been a long day. The gathered community was quiet, lethargic; men and boys in voluminous white shirts, wide brown pants tucked into high, worn boots, a brimmed felt hat or slouch cap worn jauntily, the ornate silver hilts of long knives tucked into broad leather belts. The women and girls wore the everyday uniform of working farmwives: jeans and comfortable tops.
They watched me too, wary eyes, unsmiling. In the shorts and sandals of a passing tourist, snapping photos; I was clearly the only outsider.
I did not stay long, hopping back into my little tin-can car and heading off to the Estancia (ranch) San Pedro del Timote, where I’d be spending the next few days.
The Estancia sits far from Montevideo, 
amidst the rolling plains of Uruguay’s cattle lands. The monotony of the grass is broken by tall islands of cultivated Eucalyptus and the occasional, colourful town under an immense blue sky. 
With a Jesuit past, the hotel boasts a Colonial style church, and spreading 1920’s house (I loved the dark wood and tile Library) and offers travellers a chance to pretend for a few hours that they are gauchos and ride out onto the plains on docile ponies.
It is beautiful. The daytime sky stays profoundly blue all of the way to the horizon. A fiesta of green parrots provides a continuous, cacophonous sound track.
The night-time sky is black velvet, pinned up by the moon’s blinding disk and pricked with thousands of countable stars. At night the cricket adds a melody to the soaring chorus of wind-rustled leaves. A cool, steady wind applies pressure from the ocean 100 km to the east. Outside my door, the horses stamp impatiently in their corral.
For two days I live the cowboy fantasy of sun-drenched plains, powerful horses, hearty meals and a soft linen bed in a cool adobe house. (Hey, not every aspiring cowboy wanted to bunk down by the fire!)
It was only the slightest of sips at the storied gaucho life, only the smallest insight into an exotic and timeless lifestyle that I had glimpsed briefly on the competition field of Cerro Colorado.
- 30 -
