Started in my new farm a few days ago. If I thought Isabel was in the back end of nowhere I was way wrong. This place is 70 miles from Bahia Blanca and about forty minutes from the nearest town. However, whilst it is still an Augspach farm, that's where the similarities end. Isabel was flat as a pancake and La Gloria is sort of rolling scrub hills. The gorse and thorn trees are standard and cover the majority of the land. Its phenomenally dry however there is nowhere near as much dust because of the vegetation.

Whereas in Isabel they fattened up the meat cows and grew crops, here they only focus on the calving because the land is not good enough to sustain crops and cattle. There is one tractor that is rarely used and the majority of transport is done with the boss' (Jose) 4x4 and the horses. This is the stereotype that I dreamed about, riding horses for 70% of the day with my beret on and my knife strapped to my belt. I work with Jose the boss, his son Mattias and another Jose.

We move the cattle and calves around the fields for the grass and supervise the birthing and maintenance of the cattle. It's a traumatising experience castrating the calves and Jose was pretty perplexed and impressed with my joy in throwing them around, however understood when I told him it was a good replacement for rugby.

My riding is getting better daily although I still have not mastered the gaucho technique sort of have my own standing gait which is good but difficult when the ground gets rough. Jose has explained to me the difference between the two types of horses over here, mestizos and criollos, the mestizos are tall and fine whereas the criollos are slightly more squat and built like tanks. My horse desperately wants to go like the clappers the whole time and has brakes that work about half the time. BUT I have not fallen off yet.

As I said this is serious outback country so naturally they do a fair bit of shooting. If I get lucky I will get a crack at a boar as they wander through occasionally and if God is really on my side I may get a shot at a puma, which would be a dream. To help find the cattle in the maze of thorn bushes they have an army of dogs, nine to be exact. Two pups, one viejo and 6 workers, including a lab and boxer.

Simply put this is living the Argentine dream to the max.