Lobos

Lobos is the kind of town that exists for Argentines and almost never for foreigners, which is precisely why I like it. It sits about a hundred kilometres southwest of Buenos Aires on the flat green pampa, an easy drive on a straight road, and it is the place porteños go for a weekend of horses, asado, and the particular nothing-much that the pampa does so well. There is no monument to climb, no must-see. There is a lagoon, an old town centre, and a whole landscape that asks you to slow down or leave.

I came partly because of the football. Lobos is the birthplace of Juan Román Riquelme, the most beloved playmaker in Argentine memory after Maradona, and there is a low-key pride about it in the town — a mural, the name spoken with reverence in the bars. But the real reason to come is the estancias. This is deep gaucho country, and unlike the polished tourist ranches closer to the capital, several of the estancias around Lobos are still working cattle operations that happen to take guests, which makes the difference between watching a tradition and being briefly absorbed into one.

A day in the saddle

We spent a day at an estancia outside town, and it was nothing like the choreographed gaucho shows I had been warned about. We rode out across paddocks with a gaucho named Oscar who had been doing this for fifty years and had the economical movements of someone who has never once been in a hurry. The horses knew the route better than we did. We moved a small group of cattle between fields, which I was useless at and Lia took to immediately, and then we sat under a eucalyptus while Oscar built a fire and grilled an asado that took three hours and was worth every minute of it.

The food at these places is the whole point and also gloriously simple: beef, more beef, a salad of tomatoes and onion, bread, red wine, and mate passed around afterward in a gourd until everyone has had a turn. There is no menu. There is no choice. There is just an enormous amount of very good meat and the expectation that you will sit at the table for the rest of the afternoon. As a Frenchman I am constitutionally suspicious of meals without sauce or ceremony, and this one converted me completely.

The lagoon and the town

The Laguna de Lobos, a few kilometres outside town, is the other reason locals come. It is a wide shallow lake fringed with reeds, ringed by little clubs with docks, and it is the centre of the town’s weekend life — people fish for pejerrey from small boats, families set up by the water with the inevitable thermos and mate, and the whole thing has the unhurried, slightly faded charm of a place that has been a modest holiday spot for a century. At dusk the water goes mirror-flat and the flat land and the flat sky merge into one another so completely that the horizon disappears. I stood on a dock and could not tell where the lagoon ended and the evening began.

The town itself is small and worth an hour’s wander: a leafy plaza, an old church, low buildings in faded pastels, and a Sunday feel even on weekdays. There is a museum dedicated to the local farming and gaucho history, and there is, of course, the Riquelme connection for those who care — and in Argentina, almost everyone cares.

When to go

Spring (September to November) and autumn (March to May) are the most comfortable, with mild days ideal for riding and being outdoors. Summer can be hot and humid on the pampa, though the lagoon helps; winter is grey and cold but the estancias are cosy with their fires going. Weekends are when the town and the lagoon come alive — and when the estancias run their day programmes — so aim for a Saturday or Sunday and book the estancia ahead. It is an easy day trip or overnight from Buenos Aires.