La Margarita – Guests – Easter = Great Time

When I first purchased La Margarita all those years ago it needed lots of work and before I started the work I held an asasdo on the estancia  for friends, those who worked for me and an assorted number of experts in tourism. It was a great weekend and all that came seemed to enjoy it. At the Sunday asado I stood up and mentioned to my guest that there is no such thing as a free lunch and I needed some advise. I gave each guest a piece of paper and asked them to give me three suggestions on how I could improve La Margarita for guests. It was very interesting to read the feedback when I gathered them all together. However, one suggestion by someone who will remain nameless  (he was a Brit and tourist expert) suggested I didn’t mention that the new owner is a Brit because if I did the Argentines won’t want to come to the estancia. It worried me a bit I must admit- what if he was right. There is no don’t about it I wanted the La Margarita to be enjoyed by guests from overseas but also I wanted to have lots and lots of Argentines guest enjoying their heritage.

In truth I didn’t need to worry as the years rolled by because more and more Argentines came to enjoy La Margarita on long weekends and summer holidays – I didn’t seem to matter a hoot to them that a Brit was the owner only that La Margarita was a traditional estancia which I have to say it very much is. 

This Easter was no different we were full and 75% of our guests were from Argentina which for me was great and it made me feel very happy and proud of my team who made the Easter holidays on  La Margarita a fantastic few days. To cap it all a few  days ago we got a wonderful email from a family who spent Easter on La Margarita La Casa Rosado where  our self catering units are located  . What they wrote was a wonderful tribute to La Margarita and the team who work on it and I felt like sending a copy to Mr Nameless but that would have been childish but the thought was there! Below is the unadulterated version of the email that Dra. María Jose Sañudo sent us – it is of course in Spanish since the family is Argentine. If you need it translated please mail me at estancialamargarita @gmail.com and I will be happy to do it for you but even if you don t speak Spanish I think you will see that this family were very very happy here and that makes me very very happy for sure.....

The email…………………

Estimada Susana:

                            Quiero agradecerles los lindisimos días pasados allí. Realmente nos ha sido un espacio para compartir en familia, para fomentar el diálogo, para vivir una verdadera Semana Santa. La presencia de la capilla completó nuestras expectativas, que no pensábamos tendríamos esta facilidad y cercanía con la práctica de la Fe. El continuo contacto con el aire libre, los caballos, las cabalgatas tanto la extensa como las más cortas, nos permitieron, junto a la gracia y simpatía de Lalo y su hijito, poder remontarnos a tiempos lejanos en el que recorríamos el campo paterno. La posibilidad de brindarle a mi hijo Francisco el espacio necesario para que tomara confianza sobre el caballo y saliera al galope, hicieron que no quisiera volver a su casa y protestara por lo corto del viaje.

                         

                          La preocupación compartida con nosotros por la pérdida del celular de la pequeña, y la busqueda hecha en gran medida por todos.

                          La compañía de Raquel en el Vía Crucis del Viernes a la tarde, invalorable.

                         

                          Y por sobre todas las cosas, el hacernos sentir como en casa, y a la vez atendidos ante cualquier necesidad.

                        

                         El huevo de Pascua fue llevado al almuerzo familiar del Domingo en Buenos Aires. Al momento de romperlo pedimos por la PAZ en el mundo y en nuestro país, EDUCACION para todos aquellos que no tienen, UNION entre todos los Argentinos.

                        

                        Me siento orgullosa de poder decir que ESTANCIA LA MARGARITA se encuentra en nuestro PAIS.

NUEVAMENTE , GRACIAS!!!!!.....Y HASTA CUALQUIER MOMENTO.

LOS SPITALERI. ADRIAN, JUAN PABLO, MARIA INES, FRANCISCO Y MARIA JOSE

Dra. María Jose Sañudo

This is David Cummings alias The English Gaucho feeling very happy

Hasta Pronto

Easter in Argentina and on La Margarita

It’s always the same around this time of year. Easter has arrived in Argentina and of course the rest of the world and its holiday’s time. In England   that means dropping a few easter eggs of at various relations houses and then heading of on an Easy Jet airliner as fast as one can to a sunny beach and few days break as far away from family as possible! I am sure we love our families as much as Argentines love theirs but we show it in different ways I guess. There is no doubt about it Easter here means much than picking up a few easter eggs and a quick look a the Ryanair flight schedule to see how far you can get from the easter egg recipients - only joking but for sure Easter here is somewhat  different. It’s almost like Christmas. It’s a time for families to get together and enjoy well being a family. What usually happens is the usual English chaos of an English Easter -people hitting the road to get to where ever the are going and creating chaos. The routine is that they take a few days of escape to place like La Margarita to rest and relax. Then on the Saturday there is a mad dash back home so that people can be with their families on Easter Sunday.  This year is has been no different and as I sit writing this blog looking at the lovely view on La Margarita we have an estancia full of Argentines (sprinkled with some guests from England and Canada) enjoying this lovely estancia doing  things like horse riding , milking cows , riding , eating a great asado and generally enjoying themselves. Both the main house and the self-catering units are full and from the comments of our guests they seem to be having a great time. But on Saturday after the midday asado all of our Argentine guests, after arriving on Wednesday, are leaving and heading back home to be with their families for the big family get together on Easter Sunday – how lovely. It’s when this happens I feel a bit home sick but then of course, I remember if I was in England at Easter my family would be somewhere else life eh!

I hope you who are reading this are having or had a great Easter. I personally want to bloggy thank our team here on La Margarita Susana , Raquel, Daniela , Leti , Lalo , Poppy, Ilona and of course Adriana in our BA office  for making it go to so smoothly  and making La Margarita a great place to be for Easter  - you really are a great team and I am lucky to have you working here – a big big thank you for  making my life easy  -  after all I only write the blog  but they make it all happen.

This is David Cummings alias the English Gaucho off to have a walk and look at the sun go down since it’s a  beautiful beautiful evening  and on days like these its really  easy to see why I purchased La Margarita

Hasta Pronto

We Had Our Cake But Now We've Eaten It

You may recall if you read my blog regularly that I was having a bit of a whine about YouTube not being perfect. We had spent three months and loads of money last year filming a promotional video for La Margarita only for YouTube to make things very difficult for us promoting it the way we wanted to. The problem was the choice of  the still frames that YouTube offered us to put on our web page as an introduction to the star-studded video. Amongst other things the video featured gauchos, horses, life in the city, the 39 bus and of course Raquel’s cake  - all playing their part to make this an award winning promotional video.  The problem was the stills offered by YouTube didn’t in my opinion really represent the video or La Margarita really very well. Oh but what fun we had strutting around BA and La Margarita shouting “cut” “ok it’s a wrap” or “take 44” or any other film like expression that we could think of as Brian (the director) looked on at Gaynor and I giggling like children with eyes pointed to the heavens and a look of come on children lets get on with it I have done a documentary   on Ossie Ardiles ( Osvaldo Ardiles).

After 3 months we had in my opinion a great video, which had nothing to do with me but all to do with Brian and his filming skills. When I saw the end result I loved it and couldn’t wait to put it on YouTube and La Margarita web page. The problem came when we had to choose the stills that YouTube offered us to help promote the video (have a look at my blog a few weeks ago on the subject as I don’t want to bore those of you who may have read it). The videos job was prompting the estancia and all that happens on an estancia but it started in BA to give an idea of the amazing change of scenery travelling from BA to La Margarita and then life on the estancia. Problem was as I mentioned and many of you saw the only still frame that we could show (or rather that YouTube allowed us) was the one of Raquel decorating a cake but it was as though we had done a Fanny Craddock video (look her up on Google) and as delicious as that cake was it wasn’t what we wanted as an introduction to the video.

Poor Brian had the job of trying to get a still frame that I wanted and one year later at long last I have it. The still frames we now have look great on our web page - the one on the English pages shows horses, gauchos and the wide open spaces of La Margarita and the Spanish version shows the Mirador built in 1870 on La Margarita. Unfortunately we (well Brian did) had to take out the whole section on the leaving BA bit, which for me was a bit sad because we had such fun doing it and it looked great. However, I am really happy with the result, the video is now shorter thanks to Youtube grrrr   but it works well. Have a look at it and see what you think on our web page. You can still see the famous cake version if you want and the leaving of BA part (no doubt Raquel will be only to happy for you to have a look at her cake decorating) as I have left it on my blog above ( no way I want to upset Raquel or its no more cake for me )

If you want to have a look at what other videos Brian and Gaynor have done have a peek on  Big Beach Hut Productions 

This is David Cummings alias the English Gaucho off to La Margarita where we have a house full of Argentine and foreign guests over the Easter week  (who knows may even play a bit of guitar)  - poor guests!!

Hasta pronto 

La Pulperia San Gervasio, Tapalque– Small in Size- Big in Reputation

The pulperias in Argentina have a huge reputation in gaucho folklore. They existed often before the towns were built and served the local community; they were a vital part of the gaucho, estancia world. A place where families met up and shared a chat, where gauchos settled disputes (sometimes  with knives!) or shared a whisky with fellow gauchos who worked long hours on the huge estancia nearby. 

Pulperias  were a place where they  could buy all the necessary things of life – some food, a broom! some dusters, a whisky or  beer  etc. They were all in all a general store/bar come everything. Course once the supermarkets stated to appear in the towns so the number of pulperias stared to close down.  Gradually a style of life or at least of meeting up started to disappear in Argentina. 

Luckily a few still survive today, not many but some and fortunately near La Margarita we have Pulperia San Gervasio built in 1855 (pre dating La Margarita by some 18   years) and it’s   still going strong. I say fortunately because as I mentioned there are few working pulperias left here in Argentina and Pulperia San Gervasio is just a few kilometers from La Margarita and it is importantly a working pulperia. 


I say a working pulperia because there are some, which are just open for tourist but this pulperia is for real. Here you can still see gauchos meet up and you can even buy that broom you needed and you can certainly have a whisky. It still has the iron bars dividing the bar from the public area just in case a couple of gauchos need to settle a score or two and the bar tender can keep serving without coming to any harm!  It is run by the two Toso brothers who have run it for the past 60+ years, before them their father run it for 30 years so you could say it has some tradition! Once the brothers retire (they are in their 60s) now I am pretty sure it will shut and that will be the end of a long historic era. I remember talking once to one of the brothers while we were looking at the view from the bar over a beer and remarking how peaceful it was as we gazed at the glorious pampas and cows grazing in the fields beyond! (the view must have been the same when their father run the pulperia all those years ago) and he replied “yes takes a bit of getting used to all this peace”

With a reputation so big it’s no wonder that sometimes when we have guests on La Margarita who inform us they are off to visit the pulperia arrive back to inform us they couldn’t find it.  Sometimes I have to say it doesn’t surprise me the pulperia is huge in reputation but the building is tiny – with its reputation it should be the size of a hypermarket but the reality is it’s small so some of our guest go sailing by it but those that do find it come back full of wonder. As tiny as it is when you step into the small bar you step back into a gaucho time gone by and you will wish that walls could talk and you can almost smell the tradition

If you come to La Margarita I highly recommend a visit to this historic landmark   but please remember although it has a huge reputation it is a small building so keep a look out for it but for sure it’s stuffed full with gaucho tradition and well worth seeking out

If you want to test your Spanish here are a couple of links about La Pulperia San Gervasio, Tapalque

http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2004/07/25/sociedad/s-801183.htm

http://www.turismoenazul.com.ar/art?id=110

This is David Cummings alias The English Gaucho hasta promto