The first day of the trip, we got up at 6.30, a couple of hours before dawn to give us plenty of time to finish packing and leave with the light. We caught the horses from the field, an easy enough task when you have oats to bribe them with, and set about saddling them.
This was when we discovered that despite his generally calm and friendly demeanor, Durazno has a tendency to freak out at the most random things. He was tied to a fence with his halter as Magnus was saddling him, when he suddenly jumped in fear-we were never able to work out why-and started pulling back on his halter. As he was tied to the fence, he couldn’t pull away, which scared him yet further and so he pulled even harder.
Durazno is an incredibly strong horse, and when he decides to pull with all his might, there isn’t much that can withstand him; not even a well dug-in fence. The fence lost the battle and suddenly we had Durazno running loose with a 6-foot chunk of fence hanging from his head. Unsurprisingly, the fence tied to his head didn’t do much to calm him and he started bucking and rearing, the piece of fence that I could barely lift off the ground flapping around like a piece of paper in the breeze.
Amazingly, we were able to talk him down enough for Magnus to untie his halter and Durazno came away from the experience unscathed; which is more then could be said for Esteban’s fence or my nerves.
The rest of the preparation passed thankfully uneventfully and as we were nearing the end, Esteban’s friend Nestor Prieto very kindly came down to see us off and also to tell us about his parent’s house, a couple of day’s trek away, where we could stop and get food for the horses. Nestor helped us repair what was left of the fence and we then headed off, with Nestor on hand to record the momentous moment.

The moment that we set out on the first day of our trek.
The momentous moment didn’t last too long as we had to stop at the bottom of the road while I jogged off to the supermarket to get a few things we’d realised we’d forgotten as we were packing. We then had to stop a few hundred meters further on to get fuel for the stove as all the petrol stations had run out the night before, and also to adjust the shifting saddles. Progress thus far was unlikely to break any records, but at least we were underway.
It was then that we noticed that we were being followed by India, one of the dogs that lived with Esteban. We started shouting and yelling at her to go home, at which she would sullenly slink away, only to reappear seemingly from nowhere happily trotting along behind us a little while later.
After the first few kilometers we’d shouted at her so much, just my shouting her name would cause her to sink cowering to the ground, but still she didn’t get the message to head home. There wasn’t anything more we could do, so we just carried on shouting, something which scared the horses and made riding somewhat more interesting, and hoped that she’d eventually get bored and leave us.

India, not yet realising that she was setting out on "walkies" of several hundred kilometers.
After a few kilometers we reached our first major bridge; something we’d been dreading after our tortuous experiences on the first trek. However, this time it went almost without a hitch, the horses even remaining calm when a huge double-decker bus thundered past us half-way across, something else that had been one of my biggest fears.
Buoyed by our success, we carried on up the road (with frequent stops to adjust shifting saddles) until we reached the next bridge. This was an entirely different affair to the previous one, a rickety wooden affair with so many hoof-sized holes that we were even more concerned then the horses, who took one look at it and stopped dead, refusing point-blank to take another step forward.
As the six of us (I include India even though she was cowering off in the distance after we’d shouted at her again) stood looking at the bridge, a passing cyclist told us that he thought the river could be forded further upstream. This seemed the safest-as well as the most horse-trek-like thing to do-so we took the horses along the bank till we came to a place where the current didn’t seem too strong and river wide enough that it was only a few feet deep.
It took some doing, but Magnus eventually managed to wade across on Durazno whilst dragging a reluctant Kicki, while I followed on Celeste; wondering how good an idea this was as the water crept high enough for my feet to be dangling in the river.

Magnus intrepidly wading across the first river we crossed on foot.
However, it all went without a hitch and as we clambered up the opposite bank we felt a surge of elation, only tempered slightly by the sight of India paddling across after us…
The rest of the day passed well, if slowly, the GPS unit which was to become our constant companion recording each step and letting us know exactly how far and fast we weren’t going. The scenery became more majestic and expansive as we moved on up into the low hills surrounding Junin and as we sank into the tranquility of the surroundings and the slow pace of the horses, we realised that we were finally doing what we had spent so much effort in preparing for.
We passed scattered houses and farms, where the inevitable dogs rushed out in a flurry of barking to shoe us on, and waved at the occasional passing trucks and cars, each one of which would inevitably beep and wave as they passed. After they’d passed, the dust would settle and the silence descend, leaving us alone with the Patagonian landscape and the gentle crunch of horse hooves on the unpaved road.

Jens with the horses and India at one of our stops.
We’d been told that there was a farm called Estancia Vieja about 30km away where we would probably be welcome, but as we passed several kilometers beyond the 30km mark with no sign of anything like what we’d been told to expect and darkness starting to encroach, we succumbed to the temptation to use the trappings of modern technology and unpacked the laptop, plugged in the GPS and used Google Maps to work out where we were.
It said we had more then a kilometer to go to the back gate of the Estancia, and when we got there, with the sun starting to set, we found that it was padlocked, meaning we would have to carry an undefined distance further on to the front gate.
The road from here on descended in a crazy series of loops which took us nearly 2 hours to negotiate, so that we walked the last hour in total darkness, which wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience for any of us, as by this time we’d been walking for nearly 11 hours, covered almost 50 km and were pretty shattered.
We got to the front gate to find that locked too, so that Magnus had to jog the mile or so to the Estancia to speak to whoever he might find there while I stayed with our worried and hungry horses. It turned out that there was no mobile reception here, and so Esteban’s message that we were coming hadn’t been received (which was why the gates were locked). However when Magnus got to the house, he found a friendly Gaucho there called Arturo, who seemed entirely unfazed by two knackered Gringos, a dog and 3 horses turning up unannounced at his home way after dark and welcomed us in, helping us to unpack, settle the horses in a corral with some food and show us a place in the barn where we could sleep.
Arturo welcomed us into the stone building he lived in, let us cook in his kitchen and then spent a couple of hours chatting to us. He was a lovely guy, who had moved to the country from Buenes Aires to be away from the city and was now working as a Gaucho on the farm, which was owned by a German owner who happened to be away at the time. By now we’d accepted that India was part of our team, so we fed her with our left-over food and she then curled up outside the kitchen listening to our conversation.
After we’d bid goodnight to Arturo we went back to the barn, spread out a carpet on the floor and fell asleep on our saddle blankets, feeling almost like proper Gauchos after a long and hard, but rewarding day.

The barn where we spent our first night.
The next day we woke somewhat late and had breakfast with Arturo, supping fantastic coffee from a metal pot he had bubbling away on his wood stove. After he left on his horse to go to work, we had a quick look at the route we had to Nestor’s place and then sat soaking up the peace and tranquility of the Estancia of which we were now the sole human inhabitants.
We walked the horses down the kilometer or so to the main entrance and then set about readjusting the saddles, which had yet again slipped in the walk down.
As Magnus was adjusting his saddle, Durazno decided to move off, the saddle slipping down his sides, causing him to flip out yet again and give us another display of bucking-bronco antics. Luckily as we were out in the open, there was nothing for him to hurt himself on, and we soon managed to calm him down again, the only damage being Magnus’ saddle bag, which Durazno had ripped cleanly in half.
After we’d calmed Durazno it started to rain, something that we’d prepared for, but had been hoping we could somehow magically avoid during the trip. We’d both bought military ponchos (mine a British one, which in retrospect could be considered somewhat of a mistake in Argentina…), which completely covered us and the saddles as well, theoretically keeping both us and them dry.
We’d prepared the horses before we’d left by letting them see and sniff the ponchos, and even sat on them wearing them. However, we hadn’t actually done any riding in them yet, and as soon as I set off on Celeste, I realised that every move I made the poncho rustled, or touched her hind quarters, which caused her to startle and jump, giving me a somewhat crazy ride as she repeatedly shot forward and had to be reigned back in.

Magnus and the horses experiencing rain for the first time on the trek.
On this second day, we were really able to relax and take our time with the ride, as we had a fairly good idea that our next port of call-Nestor’s parents house-was no more then 20 kilometers away, something that shouldn’t take us more then 6 hours, even at the snail’s pace we moved at.
Even though it was bitterly cold and raining, it was a beautiful ride, following the river through a green valley, with beautiful rock formations rising up on each side.
When travelling on horseback, the pace is incredibly slow, which can be intensely frustrating, when you are desperate to get somewhere and realise that you could easily jog there at twice the pace. However, being sat on a horse is somehow even more passive then walking (well, to be fair it’s only passive until you absent-mindedly scratch your nose, your poncho rustles, your horse startles, shoots off and you are suddenly clinging on for dear life, but lets ignore that for the purpose of this aside), as a result of which you get to see the landscape around you unfold a step at a time, soaking up the atmosphere and experiencing every nuance in your surroundings even more so then one does when walking.
This means that when it’s cold and wet as it was on this day, you become very aware of how cold and wet you are, but also how incredibly beautiful the place is. As we moved on I was able to look at each bird that circled overhead and watch the changing rock formations, and the trees and plants spilling down the rocky outcrops.

An example of the kind of Patagonian scenery that makes all the hardships of horse trekking worthwhile.
As we neared the hamlet of Pilolil, we came to a long, thin bridge. This time there was no other place to cross, but lucikly the bridge was sound, so the only issue was getting the horses over, which as ever took us nearly half an hour. Magnus led Durazno over, coming back for Kicki who he dragged over while I pushed her, and I then came back to a worried Celeste who then happly trotted over the bridge she had resolutely refused to set foot on before without even giving it a second glance.

Magnus, Durazno and India on the bridge just outside of Pilolil
For once, we neared our destination with several hours of daylight left and approached a fenced, wooden compound, where Nestor’s friend Enemias came out to meet us. We’d been introduced to Enemias briefly by Nestor before we left Junin, so it was great to see a face we recognised.
Enemias helped us remove all our saddles and store it in a room where he was working on the remains of a butchered cow, somewhat gruesome, but something that reminded us that we were staying on a working farm. We then took the horses down to a corral across the road and fed them a bail of alfalfa and settled them for the night.

Magnus, Enemias and Jens with the remains of a cow.
Enemias proved to be a great host, welcoming us into his home with the warm glow of the stove, which was a blessed relief after the hours out in the cold and the rain. Enemias cooked us a great stew, and also introduced us to the delights of “hoof cheese” as a starter. This sounds about as disgusting as is imaginable, as from what I understood it is the gelatine that is left over when the hooves and nerves have been boiled down with herbs for several hours, but was actually so nice I went back for thirds.
After we’d eaten we sat around talking to Enemias who very kindly let us sleep in his house next to the stove, as a result of which all our clothes dried out and left us warm, dry and prepared for whatever the next morning might bring.

Jens in Enemias front room with the stove I came to love.