On the 14thOctober I Maximillino and I drove to a farm near a place called Juarez and about 300km from Buenos Aires. We stayed the night in Juarez in a hotel then went to the farm. On the way Maximilliano told me Robert wants to pay me, and to be quite honest I was not sure how to react especially since Robert and I agreed there would be no payment involved, so I will have to wait and see. The farm is called La Choza and is about 4,000 hectares so roughly double the size of all the other Augspach farms in Argentina. Its back to the good old wind and dust and is an all purpose farm, breeding cattle and doing all the processes of the others until they send the fat ones off to Isabel.They use horses and a quad bike to run the cattle, which is fine by me. La Choza is run by another Jose and he lives there with his family (Juanjo and his wife Nancy who is very pregnant) and the other workers. Whereas the other farms are very small numbers this place has loads of people working on it. Sergio (f*** you man), Eduardo (que paysano), Martin (la paciencia), Marcelo (the horseman), Juan, Carlos and Ramon (pendejo). Sergio and Carlos live with their families and Juan with his girlfriend. As well as doing the cow breeding, they also breed horses here. Robert recently bought a cuarto miso padrillo for breeding with the criollos, and the results so far have been good. There are some beautiful young horses, and in about four years they will be swimming in top-notch nags.

My ability has improved out of sight, I did fall off when we had to cross the wire, but it did not really count since the horse was standing still, had to happen eventually. Yesterday (21st October) I managed to round up a solid hundred odd cows on my own. They have me on a white criollo cross with cuarto miso horse. He is very relaxed and unbothered and perfectly good as a tool, although he does lack a bit of speed of the mark, but I certainly cannot complain.

One thing that is brilliant and of course completely different from the other farms due to the number of people is the sense of community. My second night we had a huge barbecue with everyone, it was absolute carnage with little children screaming and running around, and I think I gave off the right impression with my attempts at Spanish. It was Juanjo's birthday and was a rave.

The weekend was pretty relaxed they sort of do some casual work but its very chilled. The 18th was pretty full on, I spent 7 hours in the saddle moving the young cows so we could inspect them for pregnancy and inoculate them. I have invested in a pair of very nice leather boots and some bombachas, so I am looking pretty 'paysano'.