Guachito Gil

I kept noticing tiny little shrine-like buildings along the roadways down south and figured they were honoring people who had died there in auto accidents....

 

 But then I started noting that some were painted red and had red flags ...some had piles of bottles, other strange stuff piled around them.  So I started asking locals I met and found that these red places were all about Guachito Gil  (Cowboy Bob?)...Each person I asked seemed to have a different story about who Guachito Gil was....a young boy who was studying to be a priest and got killed trying to save a child, a young cowboy who got killed by a jealous husband..a pious cowboy who is a saint now and grants cures and wishes....One very fashionable woman sniffed and said all that Guachito Gil stuff was superstitious and she didn't like it one little bit (too pagan for her?).  For little ole me raised watered down Presbyterian, it all seemed spooky, strange, and quite touching....all the thought put into these little spots in the wilderness.

  

 

 

I still don't get the cigerettes, coke, full bottles of wine, etc....are they offerings or a tradeoff?  "I will quit drinking coke and smoking cigerettes if you grant me this wish"?

If anyone out there knows more about Guachito Gil, adds some comments please!

The Grand Andes continued

seen enough andes photos yet? not me, but enough commentary, we'll press on.

We stopped at this old hot springs resort, now out of business after a huge slide that took out most of the lodge and made the site unsafe... you can see the old church that the slide missed in the distance... right beside the railroad track that used to go between Argentina and Chile.... it was a very narrow gauge railroad...too bad the advent of the automobile made it defunct.











way out in the country, folks still sometimes make their roofs out of straw.... this fancy example on a roadside restaurant/store was probably more for tourists....













and here is how it looks inside the store.....























this valley seems to go from a quarter mile wide to 10 miles and just keeps on going up, as jamye so effectively displays here.

horses, dogs, steaks and those wide open spaces

By far my favorite part of this trip to Mendoza was the day spent out of town in the foothills of the Andes on an estancia.... The estancia's gravel "driveway" was at least a twenty minute ride through sagebrush and rocks... the tour company that organized this trip had helped the gaucho who owns the estancia build the two buildings below.... you can see that the thatch is of a courser kind....so all of us tourists pile out of the vans ready to jump on a horse and GO...the gaucho and his helpers very subtly slowed us all down, has us mingling with each other, getting our bearings, first readjusting each horse's gear, then slowly matching a horse to a person, talking a bit to each person.... Then we all set off for a great trip.

the small rustic barbecue shack for the tourist horse riders. us two oldies and two dozen plus less than thirty year olds all had a perfect time. my absolute first time on a horse. the horses are so well trained and easy that i became stupidly confident in the first ten minutes. but no injuries. jamye, the experienced rider, was very kind about not laughing.

look out clint eastwood, we're a comin'.

could have brought this cute dude home.

the gaucho's home had chickens, very hairy pigs, cattle, goats, stock pens, the works near the tourist campsite.



not too bad for a beginner.
(when dave first tried to get on his horse, all of him with over to the other side. luckily the goucho was there to stop him from landing on his head. after that he did great for a "virgin.")



and, the more seasoned, experienced look.