Estancia Salvacion: Harvest Time!

Fall has arrived. The air is significantly crisp and fresh, and we have gone from sleeping with fans and airconditioners going non-stop to adding heavy blankets to our bedding. Apparently the unusually warm weather Montreal was experiencing last week is being off-set by the unusually cold weather we are experiencing here in Formosa, Argentina. Thanks for the equilibrium Mother Nature.

Either way, I am happy that it is fall because fall means harvesting! Though I am not working with fruits and vegetables, there is still plenty to forage and collect at Salvacion to satisfy my eager taste buds.

Pomelos

Pomelo fruit trees can be found in a number of locations around the estancia. One of these locations is at the corral at El Chinchorro. Yesterday we spent the morning working there branding and marking calves, and enjoying some pomelos. The fruit when ripe has a pale green to yellow colour, and has a yellow-white flesh. It is apparently the largest citrus fruit in existence, and tastes similar to a sweet grapefruit. I love the tangy taste of citrus fruit, and so I spent much of the morning carving pomelos with Diego's knife. (I tried not to think of what the knife was last used for as I cut the fruit open.)

Once the work was done, the gauchos enjoyed some pomelos as well. However, then consumer theirs very differently that I. I ate the flesh of the fruit, carefully peeling away the white portions. The gauchos cut away the rind leaving part of the very thick rind pith to use as a cup. They cut a hole in the top of the now maleable fruit, then squeezed the contents juicing the insides to then drink without getting their hands all sticky. Though a much quicker and cleaner approach than mine, I still prefer the sensation of having the little juice membranes of the citrus fruit explode in my mouth.


Wild Honey

When Diego and I arrived at one of the water retention stations to pick up a worker that needed a lift to Isla Negra, we were surprised to see that while the water was being pumped from the reservoir pond to the holding tank, the men were sifting honey!

The two men had found a big hive in one of the nearby trees and smoked out the bees. By the time we arrived, they had the liquid honey and some of the hive matter in a large tarp which they were pouring through an old nylon sack. The sack was then squeezed tightly to separate as much of the liquid honey from the solid matter as possible, before discarding the solid hive remnants on the side. The honey was dark and cloudy but so so sweet. I was very impressed with the find as well as the lack of bee stings on the men who had successfully nabbed the bees hard work. That's called experience.

Armadillo - or Tatu - Hunting

Here's the story. I was accompanying Marcelo, Capitas of Isla Negra, and Diego, vet, observe some of the herds out in the field by horseback two days ago. When we were already on our way back, the dog that followed us for the entire journey got a scent of an animal. Marcelo and the dog started to work together to catch the critter trying to evade their grasp. Diego says to me, "Want to see a Tatu?" Not knowing what a tatu was, I said sure.

Before I knew what was happening, super sexy gaucho man, Marcelo, jumps from his horse, catches the Tatu with his bare hands, and the help of his dog, raises it for our observation, then stabs it in the throaght with his machete. The animal takes a few minutes to die, before Marcelo guts it and cleans it in a puddle in the field, leaving the innards and head of the animal in the puddle for the vultures to find.

After telling this story to my boyfriend back in Canada, who has had his colleagues back home only warn him that many a woman has strayed from her man after finding themselves a ruggedly handsome gaucho in Argentina, says to me that he has started to develop a little crush on the ability of the men I am hanging out with everyday; his honesty makes me laugh.

Apparently armadillos taste like piglet meat, but Marcelo gifted the animal to Diego, who is taking the kill back to his family this weekend to enjoy. When I told Diego that food is meant to be shared amongst friends, he said that was true. All meat EXCEPT tatu meat. Which apparently is his favourite meat. When I said I have never tried armadillo meat, he says that that was too bad and that I really should, one day. My efforts were proving fruitless to get a bit of that armadillo. Still, the catch was exciting.

Estancia Clarin: Agricultural Crops and Machinery

Last week I was generously hosted by one of the neighbours, Andres, to visit his ranch, Estancia Clarin. One of the interesting elements of Clarin in comparison to the other properties in the region, is that Andres has put a huge emphasis on growing cash crops and not just raising cattle. His primary focus has been on corn, soya and sorghum, all used to supplement animal feed and act as another source of income. If you can successfully grow the crops, the return financially on the land is exponentially larger. Andres said, for example, that a hectare of corn at the proper density can bring in a profit of $250 at harvest, whereas you only receive about $50 of profit from the same land if it is allocated to cattle grazing.

These numbers may seem low in comparison to the cash that was brought in from the ground crops and tree fruits at Klippers Organics, but when you consider that the type of farming here is extensive instead of intensive, and you punch the numbers, $250 x 7 000 hectares for example is $1,750,00 profit. It adds up quickly.

After a quick tour of Clarin, we headed south-west two hours to El Colorado, where Andres was going to meet some business colleagues to look at buying some new equipment for his farm. I have essentially no experience with agricultural equipment as the farming I have done has all been done by hand. But when I imagine farming in the Prairies of Canada, what I visualize are large turbines, tractors, seeders and tillers getting all the work done. This was my first chance to see some of the utility of these devices.

The first piece of machinery we inspected was an industrial seeder. In Argentina, finding new, up-to-date, good quality machinery on farms is not common. For this reason, the seeder stood out next to the other devices it was positioned against. When I reached into the seeding boxes on the machine, I pulled out, much to my surprise, pink seeds! I didn't recognize the crop, because of hte unusual colour, and it turns out that the seeds are soya seeds covered in a fungacide. Another world.

The real reason we were in El Colorado, was to look at a piece of machinery that is the intermediary piece between the harvester and bagging or trucking the harvested seed away from the farm. The crop we were dealing with specifically was sorghum.

Sorghum is not very popular in Canada, as our climate is unable to support its growth. The grain can be used for human consumption and fodder. In the areas I have been visiting, most of the grain varieties are grown for fodder.

The machine we were there to inspect was located in a field filled to the brim with sorghum seed. Nearby I was shown what has now become a silo experiment. Silo consists of all the fibrous materials left in the field after harvest which are then chopped into little bits, compacted into an air-tight, anarobic environment and allowed to mature. Good silo can last up to three years in this way without rotting. However, the silo we saw had not be compacted adequately and so the gentleman had to dig and dig to try and find silo of appropriate colouring to show us. Andres shared that their system over preserving the silo was flawed, because it allowed too much air into the system, which is why so much of the silo had turned black and become toxic.

To test the machinery first a industrial bag to contain and store the sorghum had to be installed on anther piece of equipment. For some reason that operators at the farm we were visiting didn't now how to do this, so the people I arrived with, the 'buyers', had to do the work if they wanted to see the machines tested.

Once the bag was in place, the two machines, attached to the tractors lined up and started pouring the sorghum into the bag for storage.

It was neat to see the processes of a different king of agriculture. Personally, I prefer to be more involved with the land, instead of doing all the work from atop a tractor. That being said, I understand that industrial farming has its place and is a requirement to feed to world.

Venezolanos: Asados, Whiskey and Jokes

Barbequed lamb. Killed yesterday from a herd on the ranch. Flayed and grilled on the barbque. I, with the priviledged position of being the only woman dinning amongst a group of South American gentlemen, get my choice of the best cuts of meat before they dig in to the offerings. I was delighted to enjoy one of the two lamb kidneys available at dinner.

We have been having asados, whisky, wine and chocolate everyday since the owners of Estancia El Chinchorro, the neighbouring property which Johnny manages, arrived from Venezuela for their biannual visit. Adrual, the owner, is trained as a soil scientist (texan university) and tropical plant biologist (Cornell), brought his son Luis, trained as an industrial engineer, nephew Alberto, trained in agri-business (Louisiana State University) and has an MBA (Spain), as well as a business associate, Julio. Also arrived was Johnny's older brother Santiago, for whom Johnny works.


The Venezuelans were here to check on the property, see the effectiveness of the employees, draw up new goals and budgets for the upcoming year and review the success of the past year. One morning, while the older group were deeply involved in a business meeting, Alberto, Luis and I went to accompany the gauchos at Chinchorro moving a herd from the corral to a pasture and then collect another herd and separate the calves that have not yet been branded. My job was easy, walk along the road in the hopes that the herd would follow my horse, while the others all galloped around making the cattle go where they wanted them to go.


Most of my involvement with the Venezuelans was at lunch and dinner. There I learned that meat is cut differently in South America than it is in North America. Here the animals are separated by their different muscles parallel to the bones. In North America, we cut perpendicular to the bones across multiple muscles. For more information see the Argentina Asado information page. Matambre, served with a lemon and herb dressing, was a favourite at every meal.

The Venezuelans also love to laugh, and so many jokes were told during their stay. Maybe its part of the South American culture to tell jokes, but at home, I don't know anyone that knows or tells jokes so regularly, and with such great success. So when I was asked to contribute I had nothing to share! Now I have a few to reference in the future:

A surfer dude is walking along a beach in California when he finds an old lamp. He rubs it and out pops a genie. The genie says to the surfer dude, "Hey man. I'm not the most capable genie, I'm a little out of sorts, so I'm only going to be able to grant you one wish." The dude says, "What one wish! I'm supposed to get three. But ok." The surfer dude thinks about what the one thing he wants most in the world. He says to the genie, "Ok. Well I like surfing a lot, and I wish that I had rally easy access to the best beaches in Hawaii. So I wish you would build be a bridge from California to Hawaii." The genie says, "Geeze. From California to Hawaii? That's going to be a very long bridge. It's going to take a lot of materials, need a lot of labour and take a lot of time. I'm not sure that's something I can do for you. Why don't you choose another wish." Bummed, the surfer dude says, "Ok. Well you know when a woman says yes but they really mean no. Or when they are PMSing and get all crazy and you have no idea why. Or when they start crying uncontrollably and you don't know what to say or do because everytime its different. My wish is that you grant me the powers to understand exactly what the woman is thinking and needs at all times." The genie says, "Where do you want that bridge built?"

A woman is walking down a road and kicks an old can haphazardly. A genie pops out and says, "I am the genie of the abandoned can! I can grant you three wishes, but know that I am a defective genie. Every wish I grant you I must grant your husband double." The woman says, "Ok. My first wish is that you make me the most beautiful woman in the world." The genie grants her the first wish and makes her the most beautiful woman in the world, and her husband becomes the most perfect speciman of manhood - like a greek god. Impecable. The woman says, "Ok. For my second wish, I want you to make me the richest woman in the world." The genie immediately showers her with millions, jewels and riches she has never before seen. The husband too receives wealth never known by one man before. The genie says, "Now for your last wish. You have beauty and you have wealth, what would you like?" The woman says, "I'd like you to give me a mild heart attack."


I guess the most interesting thing for me about meeting the Venezuelans was hearing about life at home. Venezuela, under the direction of President Chavez, is definitely not in a strong political state currently. People are consuming like crazy, because there is not stability with their curreny nor do people know if or when their posessions might be appropriated from them by the state. For example, owning a ranch in Venezuela, a serious consideration is to kill all the animals and sell the land before the government expropriates it for their own purposes and everything is lost by the private owners. I can't imagine living in a such a state of uncertainty. How can you plan for the future if the economic and political rules are constantly changing?

I learned too that gas is heavily subsidized in Venezuela. And by heavily, I mean you can fill up a 70 - 80 litre tank of gas for 50 cents. I was told the way you pay for gas in Venezuela is with the loose change in your pocket. I asked how that could be at all financially sustainable for the government, and Luis and Alberto laughed saying 1) that financial sustainability is not a concern, it is of no importance to the government and 2) they likely would never even consider putting the conepts of finance and sustainability together in the same thought. Unbelievable.

Estancia Salvacion: Bulls and Herd Management

Whether you blame global warming or not, droughts have become much more rough in the past five years. This year has been no exception, and so wildfires have been a problem. There is little you can do to control the fires other than build dirt moats to stop the fire in its path. So lots of grass is often lost and only charred earth and burnt palms remain.


I spent a morning working with bulls last week. It was a big change from dealing with cows as the animals look very different, are more agressive and are used (obviously) for a very different use than the cows.

When we showed up to the corral, I carried in a new set of vaccinations/medications I had not seen before when we were dealing with the cows. One of the boxes said it was a medication for tristeza. Not knowing what tristeza was, I pulled out my dictionary. The translation is sadness, which made me think that it was a medication for depression, which obviously sounds very weird. I later learned, that tristeza is a disease transmitted by ticks in the region. When the bulls contract the disease they hang their heads low and move very slowly, giving the appearance that they are sad, hence the name.

The reason that the bulls here get the disease, is because many of our bulls are bred in the south, where there are no ticks. When they come north, they have not built up an immunity as calves to the diseases the ticks carry and so get sick very easily. In fact, the day I was working with the bulls, four died in 24 hrs! That is a troubling loss rate.

When breeding naturally, you need to have 3% bulls in your herd. So 3 bulls for every 100 cows. The work that was being done with the bulls was identifying and separating the different bulls into the different herds of cows. Bulls come in all shapes and sizes. The best bulls were separated to be put with the cows who would be conceiving without their calves. This is because cows have a greater chance of getting pregnant when they don't have their calves, and so you want to produce more offspring with better genes. There was a large number of bulls that were separated for the slaughter house. These were either too old, didn't have a good appearance or had an ailment. One bull for example had a massively swollen testical, which meant it could not longer reproduce, and another had a scrotum diameter that didn't measure up to the minimum size it should be at the age of the bull, which means it doens't have an optimal reproductive and growth system. Cutting block for them all!

The bulls are all tagged. Diego and the captain at Corai Cue first identified to which herds they needed to introduce bulls, and then handpicked the bulls identifying where each animal goes. This is where you see the importance and labour involved with being able to run a traceable and transparent operation where the operators know the value, health and location of their most valuable assets, their bulls.


This cow has anteojos, sunglasses. On cows that have white faces, their eyes are more vulnerable to the sun and they get eye infection more easily. So you will often see that they have black or brown patches around their eyes that act as sunglasses!

Some cows are more brave and more stubborn than others. This cow for example did not like the idea of being corralled at all. The first time it escaped, it jumped out of the corral passage right behind me! I had to jump down to get out of the way. It then jumped into the paddock with all the bulls so it didn't feel alone. We later had it separated again, and it tried to escape a second time. The gauchos however were able to push back against the cow back to get it into the stall. the two pushing forces, cow against gauchos, however resulted in the cow tipping onto its backside in the stall - it was stuck like a turtle unable to get to its feet. I thought the whole thing was quite hilarious, though it was a lot of work to flip the cow back over.

Estancia Bouvier: A meeting of ranch holders

Last week I was able to observe a meeting of the local Argentinian ranchers. Apparently in Argentina, the government has divided the ranchers of the country into various groups. These groups are supposed to meet regularly at one another's ranches as a way of sharing and policing the activities that are going on at the various properties. A government official, a agricultural scientist, is supposed to participate in these meetings as well as a way of sharing and collecting information to then report back to Buenos Aires. In this way, the cattle industry can quickly and efficiently share and distribute new technologies and information across the country.

Groups are generally supposed consist of 8 - 12 ranching groups, however the meeting group is stil relatively new here and consists of only 3 - 4 groups. The meeting is a day long affair. We met at 8:30 am for introductions and some coffee. We then were given a folder with maps and statistics on production at the ranch, Estancia Bouvier. The manager discussed long term goals as well as past obstacles. For example, Estancia Bouvier is located along the Paraguay River. At first I thought this was a huge advantage for irrigation and drinking water purposes, but was told that in fact it was a huge problem because the river gave thieves easy access to steal cows. When the animals are being stolen at a rate of 2/week, which annually adds up to losses of over $100,000 you have a problem. For this reason, an entire section on the river is not used by the ranch in order to keep the cattle from being stolen.

Interesting statistics for me were the following. The ranch own 52.000 hectares but only uses 47.500 hectares. They have 33 employees - 3 administratin, 19 cattle workers and 11 maintenance people. In the last five years, they have had a pregancy rate of 75% of their herd, from which they experienced a further 20% loss to delivery. This means that on average only 60% of the cows are delivering calves, which is very low. Miscarriage losses of 20% are very high I am told, and business wise, only replicating just over half of your herd doesn't seem very effective.

However, I learned that the reproduction system is much different at Bouvier. There they only have one mating season, from November until April. The purpose I was told is to simplify the process and reduce labour, which it does, however the returns and pregnancy success is much lower.

Other interesting numbers were the weight of meat leaving the farm - in 2006 the statistic was 29.6 kg/ha whereas in 2011 the weight was only 18.5 kg/ha. The total weights leaving the farm in those years were 1.407.017 kg (2006) and 877.969 (2011); this number includes both cows and calves. The last interesting number is the carrying capacity of the land - on average the land required per animal is 2.18 ha. The ranch has approximately 22,000 animals at any one time.

The main topic of conversation for the day was grass. Specifically tangola grass. This grass is a hybrid of tanner grass and pia grass. It contains high nutritional value and replicates itself from plant cuttings rather than seeds. Above you can see one of these plants at one month old.


Today was the first day that I really got down and examinted the grasses in the fields. The pastures contain an abundance of variety and accordingly, a rancher needs to be able to identify which grasses are supporting and which are hindering his success. Above is a native legume species that fixes nitrogen into the soil but has little greenery content for consumption by the animals.



The scientist that accompanied us for the day is an expert on grasses in Paraguay and the Northern region of Argentina. He spoke freely of the replanting initiatives that were taking place in ranches in his area of expertise and how to go about doing the replantings economically. First, you have to identify if your land is high-land or low-land - though Formosa seems completely flat, after being here for a few weeks I have started to appreciate the differences in water content in the soil and vegetation in depressed areas and elevated areas. It is vital to grow the right grass in the right conditions, or your are wasting your time and money. For this reason, we examined maps of Bouvier that provided inventories of the soil types, elevation conditions and moisture content of the ranch.


Here you can clearly see the difference between the front field and the back field in color and consistency. The grass in the foreground is pangola (different than tangola). When the tractors tilled the soil to plant seed, it provided an opportunity for the pangola already in the field to proliferate. The back field is untilled and still natural grasses.


Part of the tour included visiting Salvacion to the place where the tangola for Bouvier was collected. Tangola needs low land and higher water content. It is a competitive plant and will grow as a mat to cover the ground and outshade all other plants, or if it is growing where other plants are already established it will grow vertically to compete for the sun.


Other than a different breeding regime, it was neat to learn that Bouvier also supplements the diets of their animals differently. In fact, they buy cotton seed from the many cotton producers in teh region, and feed the seed to the calves on these nylon feeding troughs. The seed is bought in bulk at $125 US/tonne, but the seed needs to be picked up and bagged by Bouvier. At our farm, we supplement the calves diet by saving planted fields for them when they are first weaned from their mothers. This provides higher nutrition to the animals than putting them into natural grass pastures.

Estancia Salvacion: The People

In order for any operation to work successfully, you need good people. I really learned this last week when we visited another neighbouring ranch and witnessed how much less work is done when drive and creativity are missing from employees. Here are some of the people that make it happen at Salvacion:

Prescilla

Prescilla is the cook and cleaning lady at the ranch. As I mentioned previously, she is usually the only female at the farm, which requires a certain strength of character from the outset. Prescilla, 48, is from Paraguay. She is the mother of 6, grandmother of 3 and acting matriarch on the ranch. In fact, she has two brothers and a nephew that work here. It may seem like a luxury to have a cook at your place of work to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, keep the house clean, clean the dishes and do the preparations for business guests. However, after working with Diego and Johnny, I have learned it is essential for their efficiency at work. For example, Diego often leaves for work at 6.00 am and returns at noon, then goes out again at 2.00 pm and returns at 8.00 pm. With Prescilla taking care of the cooking, he can focus all his attention on the animal component of the farm at all hours of the day, which he does. Prescilla too is the main station of the ranch. Everyone is connected by radios. At the house, Prescilla has a unit so if ever a message needs to be passed on and someone is off radio, Prescilla holds the message until it can be delivered. She is a very tiny woman with a big personality. She loves to prepare desserts, and after everymeal she stands at the head of the table and offers a menu of different desserts available. And her desserts are great! This I know unfortunately much too well.

Javier

Javier is the accountant and administrator at Salvacion. He alone is responsible for all the purchasing on the ranch, the accounting, centralizing the record keeping and the salaries. Javier doesn't speak English, so once when we tried to communicate he decided it would be faster to type what he wanted to say into an online translator and have me read the translation. It quickly became apparent that those translators are not very effective and we had a good laugh about it. Javier lives in Clorinda and commutes daily to work. The most notable habit Javier possesses is that he puts mayonnaise on everything - all forms of meat, whether they have been flavoured or not, pasta, salad, bread, and I imagine fajitas too if I were to cook them!

Don John
This is Don John, the man who started it all. Well in fact it was his great grandfather who started iit all, but it is John that has passed the ranching business down to the next generation. At 81, John is still involved in the business, though two of his sons run most of the operations. His great grandfather immigrated to Argentina in 1830 from Ireland with very little and died with 200,000 hectares to his name in the province of Buenos Aires. If I remember correctly, at one time the family had a shipping and transportation company to their name but it crumbled many years ago. However the land still remains in BA and it has been used to grow the cattle operations into other territories. At one time Don John even had ranches in Venezuela, but sold the land to a relative with ties to Venezuela at the advice of his children when the political climate became more rough.

Don John speak English impecably, is the father of 5 sons and granfather of many. He continues to be very curious about life, culture and living, which is apparent by his continued passion for education and travel. This week in fact he is participating in a course on how to cultivate tilapia in Argentina as a potential business idea for the future. And he just returned from a multi-week cruise across the Atlantic. John says one of his favourite places on Earth is Venice, and has strongly encouraged me to go - he goes at least once a year.

I greatly admire his stories, his life experience and the life he has built for himself in South America. We had many good laughs, and a very memorable time is when we talked about bats for about 10 minutes then Prescilla, Diego and Johnny came running into the living room with brooms chasing a bat that had got into the house. Unusual timing if you ask me!

Quitolo
Quitolo is the resident mechanic and handyman. Quitolo has had a rough life of late. His wife has been very ill and was recently diagnosed with an infection of the spinal chord, which would have killed or paralyzed her a month later had they not discovered what was ailing her, and he was recently bitten by a poisonous snake at Salvacion and had to be taken to the hospital for emergency care. Regardless, Quitolo is back at work, still sleeping outside but now he has moved his mattress from the ground to ontop of the large dog cages in the open air shed.

The story of his being bitten is really quite something. He was asleep in the shed where the grain, tractors and tools are kept. All of a sudden, the rats that eat the corn in the night started to squirm about and run away. Quitolo reached for his flashlight to see what was going on and instead grabbed the snake that the rats were trying to escape.

Quitolo is a bit of a magic man - definitely one of the gems you want to have on a farm. He is the type of person who has been fascinated with machines and mechanics his entire life. As a child, he used to bring water for terere to the local tractorist just to be around the tractors. Today, he can fix or replicate anything with broken and discarded pieces of wire and metal. In fact, in Johnny's care I reached for a car charger and soon realized that it was a Quitolo construction when I saw it was pieced together from 7 different wires. Above, he is fixing a broken pipe, by tying a wire not currenty in use from the seeding mechanism on the tiller to the pipe and the crossbar. Johnny likes Quitolo because he is able to fix all the broken machines or replicate more expensive machines for very little money - and they work!

Luciano
Luciano is Quitolo's nephew. He works on maintenance jobs around Salvacion, but spends a lot of his time in the west at San Miguel working with the tractors to build the water holding pools for the animals. I understand that he is currently being groomed to be a master tractorist/mechanic and Quitolo wants to keep him close so that he can be the lead on more major jobs.

Alejandro
Alejandro is such a character! He always makes me smile. Alejandro is Prescilla's brother. He is a general maintenance man at Salvacion and gets whatever needs to be done, done. He is trained as an electrician and plumber. However, I know that he did the plumbing at the house I am staying in and in one of the bathrooms both the hot and cold water taps are reversed. Honestly this fact fits his character perfectly.

Alejandro has a few children, not sure how many, but two of them are studying to be lawyers. He has tried to teach me some Guarani and shared many stories. I find Alejandro the easiest to understand because he is the most animated when he speaks. He also talks very loudly and repeats himself often so that I understand.

On the ranch Alejandro is famous for disappearing. He leaves the ranch and says he will be back on a certain day and then doesn't come back! I got to witness this disappearing act as he call it this last week. Alejandro was diagnosed with cancer two years ago and has been using an alternative medicine prescribed in Paraguay to keep himself healthy. The doctor says if he takes the drink he will live 28 years and not the months the doctors in the hospital had told him. So far so good, but finding the essential oil is very difficult this time of year, in the fall, because it is from a leaf that is popular in the spring and early summer. Today all the essential oil available goes to Europe and America in bulk quantities. This is why Alejandro was gone for an extra week, looking for his medicine.

Diego


Diego is the vet at Salvacion. He's also the guy to go to for the operations. He knows all the statistics about the animals at Salvacion which is effectively what helps make the business decisions. How healthy are the cows; what nutrition needs do they have; what was the pregnancy rate; how many will have to be put with the bulls again; how many animals does the estancia have. He is the link between the three divisions on the ranch as well as the field work to the office work.

I have definitely learned the most from Diego. Most of the information I have shared about the animals and the operations are a result of the time Diego has spent with me. He has been very patient and very willing to let me be involved. It is with him too that I am getting the most practical experience as he is the one that goes out into the field every day.

Diego also likes to speak English, even though he thinks many of the pronounciations in English are odd. So on our long drives around the property, we have English lessons. At lunch and dinner, Diego is the salad man. He without a doubt finishes the salad on the table, drinks tons of water and then encourages me to eat the dessert! I have been trying to hold off, so one day when I said no, Diego thought it would be fun to trick me into having dessert with him. I consented and then he didn't have one! He said fat cows are the better cows, so I should eat a dessert. Thanks Diego.

Paraguay: Ciudad del Este and Asuncion

Oh my. Where to begin?

Paraguay is a mess. It really is a country where anything goes, and for that it is truly impressive. I spent the last three days exploring the famous city of Ciudad del Este, known for it's multi-million dollar a day trade of black market goods. Really I went to the east of Paraguay to gain access to the UNESCO environmental wonder, the Iguacu Falls, located in Brazil, but I was thorougly impressed with the Ciudad del Este as well.

Situated right at the border between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, Ciudad del Este is a city of commerce. The people who work in the daily business of pushing their goods live a tough life. They are constantly selling, unpacking, repacking, shipping, trading and doing their best to make it all worth while. Here too was the first time I saw kids working the business - mainly boys 10-14 who have the appearance and mannerisms of being 40-year-old men, sat at their stalls and bargained with you to make a sale.

Most or the market is in the downtown center of the city. With a population of around 200,000 the city isn't too large, but the center is bustling when the markets are open. All the goods are priced in American dollars, and in fact most sales are done in American dollars. When I went to the ATM to get my money, I was asked if I wanted US dollars or Paraguayan Guarani as my currency. It is the first time I have seen a country offer a foreign currency at their instant teller machines.

I must admit I do like shopping when a deal can be had. So the first day I got the lay of the land, figured out where the different sectors of goods were located including electronics, perfumes, sunglasses, hunting gear, clothing and bedding, then I returned home to research the prices that were being offered. I quickly learned if I wanted to pay with my credit card I would have to pay 10% more or if my friend Nilsi wanted to buy something, she would have to pay a 10% Paraguayan tax. Obviously being a foreigner, I knew I would be at a disadvantage for prices. And realistically, if you think you will get a good price just for buying in a city where deals can be had, you will be taken advantage of very quickly. I went home and searched the product reviews of the items I wanted to purchase and the Canadian prices that were the lowest possible buy back home.

The next day, when we went to the market, I was there to buy a camera and a pair of sunglasses. The camera I found has everything I have ever wanted or needed in a camera including being waterproof, freezeproof, dropproof and shoots panorama! There was only one store that was selling the camera I wanted since it is more on the high-end of the market. The first price I was given was way over what I was willing to pay. When Nilsi asked if he could do better he took off $7?!?! What is that? I told the salesman that I wasnt interested in buying in Ciudad del Este if I couldn't get the camera cheaper than what it is sold for in Canada and I knew the prices I could get it for in my own country. So he agreed and dropped the price an extra 15% - little does he know that to find the price I listed in Canada I would have to search high and low and then still pay the taxes on top of the base rate - so I was happy with my negotiations.

Once you agree on a price with the sales clerk, then you receive an order form. You then take the form upstairs to the glass encased cashiers who take your cash and mark your order form as paid. You then walk down the halls to receive your goods from the storage area and last go to a testing table to ensure everything is working properly. Honestly the halls are lined with boxes of electronics and I imagine the atmosphere must be like that of the stock exchange on Wall Street. Move fast, know what you are talking about, make decisions, or get used and abused.

I was told that the market at Ciudad del Este does 5 million dollars in cash transactions daily. If you go a little further out from the town you see too large scale agricultural products, such as tractors and turbines for sale. EVERYTHING goes across the border. And it is known, though I didn't have any bad experiences, that in a community that deals primarily in cash and in contraband goods, that is at the epicenter of three different nations, and only has a slight appreciation for the law, that robberies, kidnappings and bribes are very, very common.

On the first evening I went to a birthday party in the downtown - definitely a rough area. We had an asado, barbeque, including blood sausages, in the back veranda of a depanneur storefront, where Nilsi's friend and family live. We listened to American pop-music, talked about work and life while the streets were busy outside the gates we hid behind.

In Paraguay, there is a zero tolerance for alcohol and driving, which one of Nilsi's friends knows all too well. He was driving home drunk one night and got caught. The officer told him he could either go to jail or pay him a bribe of $1000, a new iBook or a new air-conditioning unit to avoid going to jail. The officer was $1000 richer the next day. Every night we drove home, there were cops with blockades at every intersection. It is impossible not to get caught on the major roadways.

We went to Brazil twice during my stay; once to go to the movies and the second time to go to Iguacu Falls. In South America there is an agreement between a number of countries where you can have free pass between the different nations with only your identity card. The countries are known as Mercosur. In Ciudad del Este going across the border and back is so common, that you aren't even stopped and asked for your documents if you are in a Paraguayan car. So I literally went to Brazil twice without ever being checked - definitely easy to sneak into Brazil.

The Iguacu falls were very beautiul. I was told that the water level wasn't very high, but with the sun on my face, the mist from the fall water spraying on my body and good company, I thought it was a fabulous day! I even got to test out my new waterproof and panoramic view camera.

Again I was very fortunate. I got to stay in a friend of Johnny's home with her family in a very nice house. Her sister's family lives in a gated community in Ciudad del Este as well where the houses are phenomenal. I wish I could have done a walking tour of the neighbourhood just to admire the homes. Really what this has taught me, that for the people with money, life around the world is pretty similar, it all depends how much you are able to spend to have the same quality of life irregardless of your location, and in countries such as Paraguay, how much you are willing to spend on security (bodyguards with rifles, bullet proof cars, and so forth) to keep the life you have from those with much less who are desperate to take what you have away.

Before travelling to Ciudad del Este, I spent a day in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. There I was touring with Johnny and his father, Don John, who was visiting the Estancia from Buenos Aires, to get errands done and see some of the city. The city is very old, and in fact Asuncion used to be the capital of all of South America. At one time, Paraguay was the power house of the continent until it engaged in three wars with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, the War of the Triple Alliance, at the end of the 19th century and lost everything. It is said after the war, no Paraguayan man over 18 years still lived. Paraguay lost most of its land after this war as well.

Still you can see the history and the European influence in the detailed architecture of many houses and buildings. Though the city has fallen into ruin in many parts, these are the signs that it was once something great and majestic.