We are finally far from the city. The team seems much happier out in the open spaces. We spent the weekend in San Antonio de Areco, a very sweet small town that is really ¨country¨. We stayed in these awesome cabanas outside of town, which are small rental cabins owned by a local Rotarian. We had a beautiful view of fields of cows and other animals from our window, and a pool to jump into to get away from the heat.
On Sunday, our hosts took us to another, smaller town, called Villa Lia. Villa Lia was celebrating its anniversary, and it was a great intro to gaucho country. The whole town was there for music, asado (Argentine BBQ), a parade and family togetherness. The parade included gauchos in full dress on horseback, as well as little kids in their gaucho outfits. I took about a million photos. I asked several gauchos if I could photograph them during the dinner following the parade. Everyone eagerly obliged, and one even offered to share his mate with me. It was a great day.
On Sunday afternoon, we were picked up and taken to Pergamino, the town that is really the host of our trip. The District Governor, Eduardo Murphy, lives here. This town is the farthest from Buenos Aires that we will go. We were greeted upon our arrival with a dinner in our honor by the local Rotary clubs. We all are quite pleased with our host families.
Today, Monday, was jam packed. We were driven to the town of Rojas, and after a tour of the small town, we met for about an hour with the mayor, and we were interviewed by the local TV station. Todd, as usual, was our spokesperson because he speaks the best Spanish. Have I mentioned how wonderful Todd has been about translating for us? He has been invaluable and has also been very good natured about it.
We had a lunch at the local Rotary Club, set up especially in our honor. The club invited a judge to dine with me. He is the husband of one of the Rotary members, and we spent some very pleasant time talking about the Argentine legal system. It is really lovely how these clubs are trying to give me access to folks in the legal profession.
The team then spent the rest of the day on professional agricultural tours, including one to Gear (a seed distributor) and another to a local dairy farm. The team was very enthusiastic about these experiences.
Tomorrow our day starts at 830 am and will not end until midnight or so (we have a Rotary meeting tomorrow evening), so we all will probably be too tired and busy to blog for a couple of days. Logistics will be a bit tricky, because we have to bring our formal uniforms, scripts, projector and props with us for the meeting. We worked this evening on cutting down our presentation and tightening it up a bit. Hopefully, it will be well received tomorrow. Good night.
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