[ Mar.2018 ] We went to a ranch where Gauchos work from Buenos Aires in Argentina.
The name of the ranch was Estancia El Ombu de Areco and that was about 20km away from San Antonio de Areco, the main town in the pampas.
The 
ranch is as large as 300 hectares.
The name, Ombu, comes from the big tree they have in the garden and this tree is originally from this area in Argentinian pampas.
This ranch is run by a mother and two sons and they live in the elegant main house built around 1880.
The tourists can stay overnight here, too.
According to our guide, Elisabet, at one point many ranches opened their gates to tourists when the tourist industry noticed that people were interested in Gauchos, but they destroyed the industry for one another and only 5 or 6 ranches survived.
We were guided to their lovely garden and first they served us Empanadas. 
Empanadas are stuffed pastries which are similar to Piroshki.
Apparently they eat them not only in Argentina, but in many countries in Latin America.
We had tried them once before, when we visited Buenos Aires last time, but I did not like it.
So when they said that they were serving Empanadas, I was not particularly happy about it, but in fact the ones they made here were surprisingly good.
The minced meat inside was nicely cooked and the pastry was baked beautifully.
So I changed my opinion about Empanadas.
After eating them, we went horse riding together with other tourists.
About 15 of us rode horses for about one hour walking around the pampas.
Most of the other tourists were French.
My horse had a light brown coat and she was a stubborn one, only following her mother or sister.
My husband’s horse was black and she was a competitive one who wanted to go fast.
That reminded me of the donkey I rode on Santorini in Greece a few years ago, which had exactly the same character. 
The main livestock are cattle, but there were some sheep, too.
Elisabet told us that, in the past, Argentina exported only the leather of cows and they used to throw the meat away.
Later, they started exporting meat, too, but during the previous government with Cristina Kirchner as the president, they made a mistake on the monetary policy, so exporting meat was no longer profitable.
Because of this, many farms changed their businesses to growing soya beans.
Now things are getting better and some of the farmers are getting back in to the meat business again.
