Already in the far west of La Pampa province. Picture of the 1960s Ford pick up that gave me a ride from Paso de los Algarrobos to Arbol de la Esperanza. The road doesn`t come up in most maps. The area is inhabited by goat herders...
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Locals in Arbol Solo. They invited me for dinner and later allowed me to camp near the house. There is no cell phne signal here, nor public phones. There is barely an unpaved road heading who knows where!
Ruben has a general store in Paso de los Algarrobos, where he invites me for lunch. To give you a rough idea of the enviroment, his kid used to play with a puma they had caught while attacking their goats...
Horses roam almost freely in the area. Sparsed ranches control areas of around 2,500 acres of harsh uncultivated land, exclusively used for goats. The main problem here is that rivers natural capacity to irrigate the area is reduced by dams in neighbouring Mendoza province. As a consequence, Atuel river has no flow at all. We did actually rode a pick up over its dry bed...
Ariel Roldan let´s me share a day of his family routine.. So there I was, chasing goats! These people have another unsolved issue: people they have never seen is coming to claim their lands, showing propertu titles issued in Buenos Aires. These families have been living here for fifty years, but never signed any document. Their right to property is though protected by laws declaring that anyone living for more than 20 years in any land is its owner...
Ariel´s son.
The whole family... It took me some four hours to find a vehicle traveling back to the main asphalt road.
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