n hour northwest of Córdoba, between the flat sweep of the Pampas and the distant wall of the Andes, the Sierras Chicas rise in a worn, blue-grey line of hills. As I left the city behind, the road began to curl and climb; traffic lights gave way to stone walls, roadside shrines, and grazing cattle. Outside the car window, wildflowers blazed between the weathered rock and sun-burnished grass, rippling in the dry heat. By the time I reached the heart of the range, I could hear hooves on hard ground and the soft murmur of mate being passed from hand to hand. This was where I was about to settle in for a while, in a place where the rhythm of travel slowed to the pace of a steady trot.
I crossed the yard to the main farmhouse and found Kevin Begg in the garden. His family had arrived there in the early 20th century and, over four generations, had become tightly woven into the gaucho way of life.
Hidden in this high country, circling eagles and drifting condors shared the landscape with Estancia Los Potreros, a 6,000-acre working cattle ranch tucked deep into the Sierras Chicas. It was a warm late morning in mid-March, and the horses were already out. I crossed the yard to the main farmhouse and found Kevin Begg in the garden. His family had arrived there in the early 20th century and, over four generations, had become tightly woven into the gaucho way of life. The farm still turned on livestock: cattle, horses, and the quiet routines of breeding, branding, and moving animals with the seasons. Kevin might have Scottish roots, but he felt more Argentinian than almost anyone I had met. In slip-on alpargatas, a knotted neckerchief, bombachas, and a slouching felt boina – the oversized beret of the gauchos – he had absorbed estancia life down to the way he walked across the yard.
With the ease of someone born to it, he began to unpack the world of the gauchos for me. “Their role is about much more than herding cattle,” he said. “But it’s a way of life that’s fading. Machines and modern farming are taking over.” He spoke about gaucho culture the way someone talks about a beloved language they fear is dying: with pride, precision, and a trace of grief. Born on the open pampas from the 17th century onwards, the gaucho tradition grew from semi-nomadic horsemen who rounded up wild cattle across unfenced grasslands, earning a reputation for fearless riding and an almost instinctive feel for land and weather. Around campfires and estancias, they shaped a culture of mate shared gourd to gourd, slow-cooked asados, and rawhide braiding as intricate as lace. Fences and tractors have shrunk their world, and today it is rare to find gauchos working cattle in the old way. “Real gauchos are now hard to come by,” Kevin told me. “But at Los Potreros, most of my staff are fourth or fifth generation. Their fathers worked for me; their grandfathers worked for my father.”
Estancia Los Potreros sits perfectly between accessible and end-of-the-road. Riders arrive to work their way through his string of more than a hundred horses, then drift back to the deep shade of the 250‑year‑old farmhouse veranda, glasses of inky Malbec in hand, while bright parakeets argue noisily in the high branches of an old pine.
Beyond the crumbling bricks and well-trodden carpets, the estancia holds on to a small but telling slice of a much larger Argentine story. Kevin still takes his Aberdeen Angus to auction every Monday, but these days a good part of his income comes from travellers who rattle up the track to his farm. Perched at around 1,100 metres in the Sierras Chicas – yet less than an hour from Córdoba airport – Estancia Los Potreros sits perfectly between accessible and end-of-the-road. Riders arrive to work their way through his string of more than a hundred horses, then drift back to the deep shade of the 250-year-old farmhouse veranda, glasses of inky Malbec in hand, while bright parakeets argue noisily in the high branches of an old pine.
Days there fell into an easy pattern: we rode, we ate, we rode again. We set off with a gaucho in traditional dress at the front, and behind us rode one of the British girls who had come for the season. I had travelled alone but quickly fell in with a loose tribe of other riders – a lovely American couple from California, another one from England, some Belgian girls who had ridden since they could walk. Our group was split by experience; I joined the more advanced riders and worked my way through different horses – all soft-mouthed and well-schooled. In the saddle, the place felt like a private playground for serious riders. With more than a hundred Criollos and Peruvian Pasos to choose from, and a maze of tracks crossing the hills, we never repeated the same route.
The pace was usually relaxed, but we had been told there would be plenty of chances to open up. Gauchos are, by nature, sparing with words, so when the man in front of me suddenly turned in the saddle and called, “Ahora, galope, galope!”, there was no mistaking the invitation. His riding was all instinct, as was the quiet way he watched us: checking girths and gauging how tired we were. We slipped from hand-gallops over wiry grassland into cattle tracks. My mounts – tough Criollos and smooth-striding Peruvian Pasos – moved as if they had memorised every rock and hollow. Their ears flicked towards a condor circling overhead before I had even seen it. It was almost entirely silent. We were well away from any road. The only sounds were the breath of the horses, the rasp of insects, and the grass snapping under hooves. We galloped hard across the Sierras Chicas and saw no cars, no farmhouses, not another soul.
As a passionate rider, I had always imagined what it might be like to live and ride through “gaucho country”. Los Potreros came as close to that dream as anywhere I had been. It is no polished resort. Instead, what I found there was a quietly modern kind of luxury, measured in time and attention rather than thread count. I slept in a beautiful farmhouse room with a heavy wooden door and shutters that rattled in the night wind. Long, Malbec-soaked lunches unfolded across a wisteria-draped veranda and faded into afternoons dusted with dandelion fluff. Sharing stories was woven into the stay. On my first evening, I was handed a brass napkin ring engraved with the name of a horse. Each meal, I found my ring at a different spot at the long table, nudging me towards new conversations. By the second night, I knew something of everyone: the American couple’s summer plans, the Belgianwomen’s decades of competing. The table did its work.
Dinners were relaxed: candles on the table, dogs angling for space on the sofa for 8 pm drinks, and Kevin presiding at the head of it all. His knowledge of Argentine wine and history flowed as easily as the Malbec. A born raconteur, Kevin hosted some form of entertainment every other night. One evening, he orchestrated a wine-tasting game using a sommelier’s box of tiny, unlabelled vials to help us pick out different aromas. The food from the 400-year-old kitchen was as generous as it was unpretentious: dishes that traced Argentina’s immigrant roots, with Italian and Spanish flavours alongside the classics – grilled beef, rich eggs, vegetables lifted straight from the garden.
One day, we rode out to the cattle station to move a herd with the gauchos. Later, as our asado hissed and smoked on the grill, we tied up the horses in the shade of the orchard and watched their lasso work: a kind of quiet theatre, all power and precision, always half a step ahead of the animals they were reading. On the way back, we cantered towards streaks of hot pink sky as the sun slipped behind the ridgeline. I leaned back in the saddle, reins loose in one hand, and felt the horse carry me – unhurried, unhesitating – into the long Argentine dusk. In the high country of northern Córdoba, that estancia offered something rare: a place where I could be folded, slowly and completely, into the social rhythms of rural gaucho life.
Leave a Reply