Estancia Corralito Estancia Los Potreros

Argentina is South America’s second largest country, a fabled land with a fabled history. Its topsy-turvy southern hemisphere climate lies mostly below the Tropic of Capricorn, comparable to United States regions from South Carolina to California along the 38th parallel. above the Tropic of Cancer. When it’s freezing in New York - the summer fun is only starting to simmer in Buenos Aires. The heart of Argentina, both geographically and spiritually, lies in the wild Pampas, the rich, verdant plain supporting most of the country’s highest concentration of wealth and people, especially after the region’s “golden age” in the late nineteenth century. Its mysterious soul forever coils in the grave, sensuous tango, personified by the beloved “Evita.”

From Piranhas to Penguins
Bordered on the West by Chile, north by Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, East by the Atlantic. and south by Tierra del Fuego, Argentina - the eighth largest country in the world - spans more than a million square miles, twice the land area of Alaska. Its dramatically descending (and cooling) regional climates range from the subtropical north, from which its spade-shaped profile plunges narrowly south between the Andean cordillera and the eastern shores of the Atlantic, 2300 long miles through the Pampas, the wild sheep meadows of Patagonia, the Strait of Magellan and the tempest-tossed archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, ending in a disputed claim to a small icy chunk of glacial Antarctica, and another royally disputed claim to the islands the British call the Falklands and the Argentines, the Malvinas, that resulted in a war with Great Britain called by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges “a fight between two bald men over a comb.”

Through the Looking-Glass at America
Argentina’s history and geography are similar to that of the United States. Both had indigenous populations of Indians and both began to be settled by Europeans in the 16th century; largely northern Europeans for North America and southern Europeans for South, and amongst them were the heroes, the heroines, the authors, the statesmen and the scalawags that go to make up a people. Instead of our prairies and cowboys, our buen vecino (good neighbor) to the south has vast roaming cattle herds on the plains of the Pampas and those dashing gauchos, and contrary to the rugged log cabin atmosphere of our western ranches, those of the Buenos Aires province that we are featuring run the gamut from a French Romanesque castle to a Tudor cottage. Many were built - or remodeled - in the expansive era of the golden age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the “Belle Epoque” when great fortunes were made in both hemispheres, and the estancieros of the Pampas were no exception. Demand for Argentine beef was great in Europe and North America, and there was plenty of grazing land in the Pampas.

The Chambered Estancias
An air of eager improvisation distinguishes many of those first Argentinean estancias, the pioneer spirit at work, the no-nonsense instinct of those 18th and 19th century estancieros - most having emigrated from southern Europe , France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal - to shelter their families from storms and marauders. They were foursquare, ground-hugging, architecturally brusque. and built to last. Unlike our modern habit of knocking down the old to make room for the new, as their families grew so grew the estancias - spreading from that inner room the way a chambered nautilus grows one chamber at a time, spiraling out from its embryonic nucleus, each new chamber slightly bigger than the one before - the outer shell a crusty unfriendly neutral white but inside all is pearlescent splendor. And it was the same with estancias. At first they were plain with thick walls and small square windows. facing out toward a potentially hostile world; but losing nothing of that founding integrity, they began to grow. As Comodoro Juan Jose Guiraldes, born on the historic Estancia La Portena, described it, “Nothing was knocked down, the idea was that everything that existed was there for a reason,” For the better part of a century these estancias expanded, room by room, story upon story, until there rose up these noble edifices with coffered ceilings over billiard-rooms for cognac and cigars, boudoirs with chinoiserie panels and cambric sheets, dining parlors with Murano chandeliers and Persian rugs and Carrara marble fireplaces. And swimming pools. And polo fields. When the Great Creator created the world, the first order of business was to find the right place for a spot of polo, and voila! The Pampas.

Not Quite The Little House on the Prairie
And those are the estancias you find today in Argentina, miraculously and lovingly preserved by fifth and sixth generation families whose patriarchs and matriarchs were the builders not only of the estancias but the country itself. There are hunting estancias, wing-shooting estancias, deer-hunting estancias, fly-fishing estancias, estancias specializing in polo training, estancias like Scottish castles, Tudor villas. There is an estancia bought by the polo playboy Prince of Brunei, brother of the Sultan, who built one of matching size, opulence and number of baths for his retinue. There is an estancia whose stables were designed by the architect of the British Embassy; an eminent Brit who then designed for the estanciera a little teahouse where she played Bach bourrees on her clavichord. There is a white Romanesque estancia of three stories and 10,000 square feet , a petit Versailles with a crenellated tower (for the archers) dormers and cupolas (for the maidens) turrets and arches and balconies (for the boiling oil). There is even one estancia that lets you help with the horses. (You get to help the gauchos with the horses. )