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Horse riding with Carol Jones

Our second day in Bariloche started at 9 when we met Carol Jones at the town Cathedral and set off for her 3000-hectare farm 30 minutes away (we had some problems with the pronunciation of cathedral to the taxi driver – apparently ‘cathedral’ sounds nothing like ‘catedral’). Carol Jones’s family farm is in the Nahuel Huapi National Park and has hardly changed since it belonged to her grandfather, the first Texan pioneer in Patagonia, who was allowed to begin farming to prevent the Chileans from spreading across the border into Argentina.

The farm is part of the national park, so there are restrictions on the number of buildings and the development of the land. It is vast and almost untouched – a mix of open plains, green bush and clumps of tall fir trees, populated only by Carol’s many Criollo (traditional Argentine) horses. She lives in a little wooden house run on solar power and surrounded by trees and her horses, who crop at the lawn outside. Her favourite, a delightful stocky cream Fjord pony is already tacked up next to a tree. Nick and I each get a strong and very comfortable brown Criollo, and set off for our two-hour ride with Carol.

We had a lovely peaceful ride, riding over the plains, past many horses and foals, into the forests, across a river and back through more plains. The horses are calm and comfortable and Carol told us all about her farm, its history and her horses. After the ride we sat under the big trees next to her house and had the most delicious lemon cake that her neighbour had made, which Carol cut with a knife that she whipped out of her boot. The horses stood in the shade around us and would try their luck for a piece of cake when the grass got a bit too boring.