Day at the Estancia (Subtitled: Baby animals are cute)

Saturday dawned a beautiful day for our trip to the estancia (ranch). It was sunny and in the 60's, perfect jacket or long sleeve weather for running around outside. The estancia we visited featured lots of animals, a pond, a playground and good food. I don't recall the name of the estancia, it was Estancia something that begins with an R, but one of the students called it Estancia Replication and now the science name is stuck in my head, so I can't remember the real name anymore...

This was a new ranch for CasaACU to go to. It is closer to the city than the one we had been to before. It was quite nice.

This sign greeted us at the enterance. More or less "No outside food or drinks. Except you can bring your thermos and mate." Uruguayos are obsessed with mate.

As I said it was a gorgeous day and it was fantistic to be outside breathing fresh air away from the fumes of the city. When we arrived we had about an hour to wander around take pictures, etc. They did ask us not to play on the swings. So instead our boys took to chasing geese.

There were these little trail things all through the grass. When you looked closely your could see big ants carrying bits of leaves. I never followed were they were coming from or going to, but it was cool. Can you imagine so many ants walking in the same place that they eventually wear away the grass? How amazing is that??? (Matt tasted one of the same type of ant when we were on El Cerro. He said they don't taste good. Just so you know...)

After an hour of playing around they called us in for lunch and the students were excited. It was their first Uruguayan Asado... It was good... but there was lots and lots and lots and lots of meat. I sat at one end of the table with Wimon, Rosalinda, and our bus driver. I could follow their conversation, but didn't have much I could add. Wimon and Rosalinda would talk to him in Spanish and me in English. Well at some point he asked a question that I knew the answer to and they weren't paying much attention. So I answered. He looked at me shocked and said, "Wait, you speak Spanish???" :) Its kind of funny to sneak attack people like that with their language. Of course I had to explain that I understand more than I can speak. It cracked me up.

After lunch we got to go out and feed animals. They gave us bread to feed to the ducks, geese, chickens and turkeys. It makes me giggle everytime turkeys gobble for some reason. I'm afraid we made lots of Thanksgiving jokes with these turkeys.


After feeding the birds, some of the students helped bottle feed a calf. It was only 2 days old and super cute. It kept losing the bottle and trying to figure out who should be feeding it. And it was super cute. (I do realize I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating.)

After feeding the animals we went on a wagon ride around a field pulled by Pablo driving this 'No No' tractor, sorry family joke. The wagon we were riding in is called a zorra, which is translated female fox or many other insulting things to women... which is strange...

We got to see lots of other animals on our ride including some lambs that were only a month to two months old... see cute animals.

Then we got to ride horses. We had to break into small groups and take turns. It was fun though. We had at least two Texans go on their first horseback ride ever, in Uruguay. For those of you from outside Texas, it is only a myth that Texans ride their horses everywhere.

Wimon, Lauren, and Rosalinda on our ride. The wind in Rosalindas hair makes it look like we were going faster than we were.

After the horsey rides, we had about half an hour until our snack time. So we went to the playground area. The students decided to build a pyramid. I wasn't going to get involved. but they really needed one more bottom layer person. The person that was there just wasn't built to be the bottom of a big pyramid, so I made him move and replaced him. :) We never got it all the way built. We were apparently close, but then the people in the middle gave out... whimps... I don't currently have a picture. If I get one from facebook, I'll add it back later.

We then had our snack, watched them milk a cow, and headed home. Most of us slept on the hour trip back to the city. I woke up and recognized some buildings and knew we were getting close to home. Then we all heard this funny noise that most of us recognized... wait doesn't that sound like a...
FLAT TIRE... yup it was. Our poor busdriver then had to change our destroyed tire. We were going slowly when it happened and it wasn't scary at all. Apparently that's the first time he's ever had a flat tire on a bus. Ben, one of the boys, helped him change it and then we were back on the road for our last mile home. :)