Estancia Santa Rita

A thief in the night

There was no pattern to days here, the ranch work itself seemed haphazard, sporadic and at best occasional. Siesta times ran on into early evening with cow-hands and farm workers appearing and disappearing throughout the day. Everybody was however fed on a regular basis, outside in the evenings, under the sun porch at lunch time and breakfast was an open running buffet in the kitchen. There was a general air about the place of us all waiting for something to happen.. That something was very much dependant on Ernesto as the eldest son and the eventual ranch owner, once this generation had petered out. His father Raol made no secret of this, now approaching sixty, still in good health and with a perpetual twinkle from the soul into the eye he had no long term appetite for the ranch and looked forward to passing the burden on. Of course Ernesto was not looking to accept this responsibility and that was a regular source of wine induced friction.

The next morning I awoke suddenly aware of a commotion out in the yard through the thin glass of the bedroom window. A white and black police prowler was parked outside, its crew in a deep and noisy discussion with Raol. Then I heard their heavy feet clump across the floor of the house and doors slamming and more voices raised. There has been a burglary. I dressed quickly and orbited the group of four of five people who were discussing the crime. The policemen had their note books out and their one radio was cackling. I had the feeling that not much progress was being made by any party as the hot mixture of anger and shock felt by the householders congealed into something solid.

After a short time it became clear that two antique shot guns had been taken, some cash and

Some jewellery. The shot guns had the most monetary and sentimental value and were still working firearms. They had looked down, crossed like the cross of Andrew from above the study fireplace and Raol was infuriated and frustrated by their loss. He was also in the process of blaming several neighbours for their theft, based on fall-outs, land boundary issues and cracked conversations that had occurred sometime over the last thirty years. The police were of course reluctant to follow up this line of enquiry until they had understood the full nature of the burglary and gathered any proper evidence. Ernesto was acting, as best as he could as peacemaker between the parties.

The guns themselves were fine pieces, or at least had been. European in origin, well crafted and probably from the middle of the last century, quite prize and not something that any, strange or purely opportunistic burglar would have expected to find. It did strike me that local knowledge and planning were involved. And Raol was particularly keen to pursue this point rather than watch them slowly pick across the means of entry, damaged window shutters, footprints in the yard dust or anything else that might have been broken or disturbed. Eventually Raol was wheeled away by Ernesto and the police got on with their work. Ernesto flashed a knowing wink, “we may have to wait a few days until this matter is resolved.”

Day one point one

Frankly I felt that I had little time to get to know anybody but I was under pressure to fit with the family unit, even for these few days. I explained myself many times, my course, my research into tropic illnesses and medicines, my year out, the car and the need for exploration. Exploration and some internalising and a need that called me to reach into the heart of this new, magnificent and failing country that was also a fledgling continent.

In the garden Ernesto and Claudia flirted like teenagers while they pretended to do laundry, funnily enough they did and it seemed as if there were hundreds of yards of flying white shirts and aprons on criss crossing washing lines sending semaphore signals across the fields; Ernesto loves Claudia they signed to the corn and grass. I squinted my eyes and turned them into James Thurber’s swans, or Pre-Raphaelitism angels roped back to the earth like newly tamed horses. Occasionally I was invited into their jokes and cigarette strewn conversations, I kept up but they were insatiable. I wondered how Ernesto would ever stand a long journey apart from her, I now know that I did not know him at all. Neither did I know him then or do I now.

I spent a few hours prepping the car, oils and waters and pressures. Carpet bags with clothing that would serve through the four seasons and thousands of feet of elevation variations were placed in the boot. There was also a battered ex-army tent and two sleeping bags, they were grey and looked to have served in numerous wars, all of which had ended in ruination and defeat it seemed.

Ernesto spoke a lot about ethics and justice , the cornerstones of his studies, like mine all now on hold and due to be enhanced by our travel and the sight of an opposite and upside down ocean twinkling under a strange sun, if only. I took a long draw on a French cigarette and watched a family of blackbirds up in a tree somewhere across the garden. The parents furnished grubs and worms from the field across the wire and squashed them into their baby’s beaks, their little heads spiking up from the carefully crafted nest as it hangs on the v bow of a silver birch branch. The adult bird birds fly back and forth feeding the chicks like a sewing machine finishing button holes in an ornate military jacket. I watched and enjoyed their relentless industry, at the bottom of the tree in a pool of sun flakes and black cat rolled in the dust, one eye on the birds.

Across the fields a man in a flack jacket was shooting crows, the crack of the rifle sailed across the open space into the garden. The cat darted away and under a shed, the blackbirds swooped down away from the nest and into the long dry grass. It was the driest summer that any of us could remember when not considering the long term effects of our congenital defects brought about by successive inbreeding, so some said.

Claudia

Claudia was shorter than I’d expected, no more than five feet tall, tiny but with an obvious boiling pot of energy within. Some vital , striking spark. The whole family had descended at about 5 o’clock and brought with them a rolling, consuming chaos that enveloped the house. Cooking was going on furiously, black pans and red steaks were on every surface and wine corks were gathering on the floor and in the corners. There were at least a dozen adults and a half a dozen children. I found it hard to keep count or to recognize and remember names, I also found it hard not to stare at Claudia who was, when not dancing amongst the kitchen tables herself, staring at Ernesto

It was a long and drawn out meal will introductions and cross connecting and meaningless conversations, few of them in English. Eventually the cheap wine took its toll and there was a mass retiral towards the rear of the house where we sat on the patio. Ernesto‘s father Juan then produced a bloodied port bottle and a weathered looking cigar box. Sexism was unknown here and both them men and women partook, the children had by now escaped and were I presumed asleep somewhere or outside practicing their night time rifle shooting. It‘s vital to keep the rabbits down.

Much later I awoke, I was still on the patio and dawn was breaking open, my unreliable watch said six thirty and I felt cold. I had enjoyed the previous night but my throat was now dry and my head aching. I lay back on the basket work couch and looked at the patterns of the woodwork on the roof. I found that it help to detach from the self and focus on some external point. Then the dogs awoke, I hadn’t realised that they were light sleepers, something had spooked them and they (three greyhounds) began to yelp and sniff. It was time to stretch and they too had to keep the rabbits down.

Breakfast was steak and eggs. Brown round steaks and great yellow eggs like Chinese suns. The coffee was hot, steaming and earthy and tasted like a swarm of wasps. As has happened the previous evening all and sundry gathered around the table and chatted in a higher than night time pitch Portuguese. I almost kept occasionally losing concentration to watch the lovebirds meet and peck in their special early morning place. She was smiling like a warm cuddle and he was grinning like a serious blow job, all between mouthfuls of steak.

From a blue car park

It was about a 45 minute drive from Buenos Aries to the ranch, the main high ay was fine and the white house and bare trees blended away behind me until after about 20 miles I turned right away from the civilised road and onto a gravel track. The car windows were down and highway’s relatively smooth road-hum was replaced by the gravel’s crackle and cackle and the speedometer fell to 20 or less as a series of potholes, missed by the gravel began to emerge. Behind me a satisfying cloud of dust was roaring nicely emphasising the feeling of progress that I was enjoying and like some self induced cavalry smokescreen heralding my eventual arrival at the ranch house itself.

On either side there had been thorny hedges, these thinned and dwindled until there were only the dry grassy fields, occasional spindly trees and no livestock or obvious agricultural industry to see. Then a sign pointing left signalled my arrival “Estancia Santa Rita” pointed towards a low and wide, creamy bungalow encircled by more gravel driveway and glaring green from behind the house and large and luxurious looking lawn. I drove up to the dark wood front door and parked alongside a red pickup. Around me and the car the dust began to settle as I took a few moments to regard the house, garden grounds and the odd artefacts and tools scattered around the front yard. There was a sense of faded grandeur and enterprise, a permanent veil of rust and a coating of forgotten sweat and rain stains splattered across everything. I felt at home.

I got out of the car and patted my jeans and chest to remove some of the travelling dust, then walked to the doorway and pulled on the bell. A fain ding ding echoed back from somewhere inside the house. I could feel the cool interior drawing me in even before Ernesto opened the door.

A small grey lizard scuttled across my brown boots, over the concrete step and into a bush. I didn’t get his name.

“Ernesto” I shouted as he opened the door. We greeted each other in the mother tongue that is Portuguese. The language of sailors, explorers and adventurers, the brave, greedy and often foolish men who opened up this vast continent and if truth be told ruined huge parts of it. Before I had my bearings in the house Ernesto thrust a three finger glass of whisky into my hand “Explorers and thieves!” he cried, as some impromptu toast and so we drank to their disconnected, collective memory.

“The car looks fine to me” he said peering at it through the window, “ we shall start out in a few days, you need a break and tonight the family shall return and we’ll all eat together and plot a little more”. I smiled and nodded. The few days rest, here in this green oasis sounded ideal and the sharp, rasp of neat whisky had already decelerated my thinking processes and begun to relax my limbs. In a few days I would be ready for the road.

Actual

I never did know quite where this or even I was going and the actual diary has never emerged, how could it? For the first chapter I have to go back to South America and my early years. As the laptop had not been invented I recorded things using simple paper and an IKEA pencil with occasional bursts of memory. I worked mostly on the theory that as time is/was eternal I could always get back to where I'd been, one way or another. At that point I hardly knew my traveling companion but I did wonder about him.

It should have been my final year at college, my graduation year but I could not face the return. It seemed that the last few hundred dollars in my wallet were burning a hole, the road and the mountains were burning the back of my mind and the huge sense of being on the edge of an undiscovered country burned into my soul. So I saw the car and bought the car, it was that simple. The story about the wooden piston is of course a myth but the back street garage vanished shortly after the transaction.

Stock photos

This is a very good photo that shows the car's elegant lines really nicely, note the rear spoiler, trim strip along the midriff, lhd and no number plate, this one is of course a Mercury. Now a similar photo of my car would unfortunately include numerous scrapes, dings and badly matched touch-up paint and the background would be slightly different. Hey ho.

Cougar tracks in the snow, not a common sight in West Lothian.

Pointless

I'm feeling at peace with the motoring world, the price of petrol, the un-repaired roads and the stupid idiots that drive on them. I am not really bothered. I watched an ugly woman throw litter from a half opened car window in a lay by, she was chewing gum and looking grim faced. The car was nice, clean and new and she clearly had no respect a) for herself b) for her surroundings and c) for anybody else. In a ideal world she would be dragged out of her car, horsewhipped and her nice shiny vehicle torched before her eyes, but what the feck is the point. I am not really bothered and I love my Cougar (at the moment).

2.5 V6

OK it looks a lot better than the 2.0 under my bonnet at the moment. Is it all worthwhile? Easy to live with? Well it is probably, smooth and long legged and err... a bit less economical. Maybe I'll just stick with what I know and what I can afford.

A80

Is there a more dreary and exhausting road to drive on than the awful A80? Stuck in some perpetual loop of repairs, realignment and muddy cones since 1978 it represents some kind of ongoing caustic comment on the status of Scottish roads and the lack of vision and inertia inherent in our system of design and repairs. The saving grace for the current set of repairs is the 40mph limit and average speed cameras which strangely keep the traffic running at all times and allow some sort of roadway democracy to prevail. The problem is of course the soporific effect of the constant drone and non-lane changing boredom staring up the arse of a white van from Carluke or a heaving HGV carrying a dodgy skip of scrap metal. Finally it ends and you can either zoom onto the open freedom of the M876 going east or lurch into the endless mess of traffic lights and the infamous 30mph speed camera that welcomes you to the bleak, road film covered village of Moodiesburn heading west. It's still (point to point) quicker than the train could ever be, so in a way I can rejoice.

Mark Webber

Mark Webber comes a cropper in a compelling piece of TV coverage of the European Grand Prix. Glad that he could walk away unscathed. This weekend I've hardly done any driving with this race, birthdays and the World Cup providing valuable diversions. Apart from the birthdays (successful) not much success in sweeps and predictors. We try.

Cars are...

...washing machines with wheels, appliances, something to transport you from A to B. That's all that cars are, nothing more. Then why the strange attraction? What happens to cause us to connect with these buckets of bolts? What part of ourselves do we give over to them in order to plant a soul into the heart of a dull and primitive machine and fall strangely in love? In a love that stays strong until the next shiny, snorting beast rolls past and catches the attention.