City: Buenos Aires
Neighborhood: Mataderos
Description:
This tour, apart from being the symbol of rural tradition in Buenos Aires City, transports us to the gaucho culture, the emblematic character of Argentinean history. This fair was born 20 years ago in the area where the old slaughterhouses of the city were located, and is today the meeting point for people from the interior of our country who are deeply-rooted to their costumes of their provinces and for those who, living in this city, like to spend a while surrounded of handcrafts, typical foods and folkloric music and dances. Also, the neighborhood was declared, in year 91, as “neighborhood of the Argentinean Gaucho”.
We begin the tour near midday at your hotel and we drive to the fair. There you will have some minutes at your own disposal to visit the old archway of the market and then we will visit the “Museo Criollo de los Corrales”. This museum is a big sample of rural objects and will give us an idea of how gauchos lived in the Pampas, through clothing, tools and everyday objects. It will also show us how in our country the stockbreeding industry started to develop, from the period when Indians ruled the pampas until Argentina became in one of the main exporter and a world leader in meats. We’ll see on the following rooms weapons, knives, carriages, animals, paintings and even the famous “quincho” or “ranch”, the meeting point for the countryside meals.
Later we’ll go to lunch to the fair stalls. We’ll taste some typical foods as tamales (grinded meat with spices boiled into a corn leaf), humita en chala (similar to the tamales but instead of meat, grinded corn with cheese), locro (a typical Argentinean stew) and the world-famous empanadas. Everything served with a good wine, obviously. After that we will be with our stomachs full, we will have more time to our own disposal to visit the stalls where we will find, apart from the handcrafts mentioned above, sweets, instruments, albums, clothes, accessories and more objects of everyday use.
Other place to visit is the historical Oviedo Bar, place that used to be an old Grocery Store that supplied the slaughterhouses workers. The time passed and the store became a meeting point of this people after working, to share a gin and some games of truco. We cannot miss to play a game of billiard in one of the eldest billiards table in Buenos Aires, from year 1920. Folkloric shows are constant on the main stage, where we will see musicians from all the provinces playing the Argentinean Songbook accompanied by couples of dancers that, in the majority, are the own assistants to the fair.
To end the evening we will attend to the famous “Carrera de Sortijas” (Rings Race), where the gaucho riders gallop towards an arch where the ring they try to take is hanging. After spending a few hours breathing our tradition, we will close the evening having a baked mate with pastelitos. After that we go back to the hotel.
*The tour includes: Guide, transfer Htl-Fair-Htl and the lunch (a dish and a beverage per person)
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Horseback games
Gaucho
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