How did I accumulate my daughter’s gap year

As the car turned off the cut road that injured the north from Cordoba, the second city of Argentina, in Sierras Chicas, my nerves began to dance. I would fly for 16 hours to surprise my daughter Amber and I wasn’t sure how she would go. Since the last October when she got the job as a guide at Estancia Los Poteros, a livestock farm known as “Los Pots” for February, I would plan this moment. She attracted me during the long winter months: drinking on Instagram Los Pots, imagining our satisfied reunion.

We slammed a dirt path. The sun was still climbing, turning the long grass of ether silver. My knees started an involuntary dormitory. I would clash with a friend the day before I left England, and when I explained what I was about to do, she would answer, “Well, I think she could go the same way.” This was the first time it had happened to me that Amber might not have been so desperate to see me as I was; This, at the age of 22, with your mother to appear in your workplace with a “Ta-Da!” It may not be the best look.

On both sides of us, the hills were alive with prickly trees and wild flowers. I left the car to open the last from the four gates and saw some grazing horses. They briefly looked at, as if they were greeted.

We bowed the car and pulled at a stop near the arched room. Georgia Beech, Los Pot manager, greeted me with a smile and a glass of icy lemonade. It was in subterfuge. “I sent Amber out on a long trip this morning,” she said. “She won’t come back for an hour.” She showed me in my house for the next five days, a pretty whitewashed casta with a corrugated red roof, a large bed and old wooden furniture.

Beyond the lawn in the main house, George took me to see the basement – “Treat it as a house” – and offered me a glass of wine. I drowned in a chair on the porch and dismissed it. Two border colies were put in the sun on the grass; Above him, Monk Parakeets Green was deceived as they fell inside and outside their large municipal nests, high in tall pines. I started resting.

Then George’s Walkie-Talkie crashed. “They are five minutes away,” she said. “I will go down to meet them and tell Amber that we have a guest problem and I need her help. Why don’t you hide behind that pillar.”

If my parents would have come out without warning When I worked in South Africa after the university, I would be surprised. And maybe not in a good way. When I traveled around South-East Asia in the year of Trench, I just got up to the house-cling-when I finished the money.

I will not describe myself as a “tiger mother”, perhaps more a little puma: present, involved in my children’s friends, school, interests. And especially with amber. When, at the age of three, she would pray for riding lessons, I jumped into the chance to take her to the local riding school. When the neighbors passed on their own horse, I gallopova in the role of Pony Club’s mum. I would ride most of my life until I marry a man who was allergic to horses – but Amber found a way to restore them into our lives.

This was also not my first to surprise our children abroad: halfway through the year of our son Alfie’s gap, I would parapel to Cape Town to join him for a week. But he was only 18 years old and surfing in bed below Africa; He would never remove free food and a bath.

Amber, however, was an adult, with one room, a job, and what seemed to be a stable diet of fillet steaks from the price of Aberdeen Angus Herd, barbected over an open fire from Claudio, resident chef. And she had chosen, when leaving the university, to go to the other side of the world. Was there any chance that I was interfering on her offer for adulthood?

I discussed it with friends at night when I confirmed my flight. The two admitted that they were ready to take gatecrashing -like trips: one in Australia, the other in Paris. Cazenove & Loyd, the tour operator that organizes my journey, told me I was far away: alone this year, they would send parents to join their descendants in Costa Rica, Okavango and Antarctica.

Other tour operators confirm the trend. “Becoming is becoming an increasingly important part of our business,” says Tom Barber, co -founder of the original journey. Partially, he believes this is because parents – most often a parent, traveling without their spouse – are from the original generation of back: “They tend to restore their youth, review the same places they visited in their year of gap – though in a more comfortable way.” No one seemed to have been rejected upon arrival, which gave me hope.

Sitting in Buenos Aires in early April, I did what Amber had done months ago: I headed to Arandu, the fabricated horse and Rider’s Outfitter, to submit myself with Bombs – the Jodhps version worn by Gauchos, Argentine Cowboys – and alpargataEspadrilles they wear when riding. The city was gentle, alive, full of history, street art, great architecture. The next morning, as I wandered through the cobblestone streets of Palermo, near my hotel, I decided to find a way to return in November when they would be decorated with Purple Jacaranda Blossom. Maybe amber would come with me?

I saw it walking through the lawn In her uniform: Navy’s polo shirt, Bombs and Argentine hats. When she was a few meters away, I got out of Wisteria. She stopped, her mouth opening and closing, without speaking. We hugged each other. “What, what?” She said, wiping tears. “How?” She looked around Georgia and asked, “Do you know?” “Yes,” George replied. “I’ve lied to you since we met.”

I believe her pleasure was genuine. Either this, or she would have been robbed by the star parts in every school game. At lunch, I saw my once shy daughter sitting at the bottom of the long wooden table in “The Conico”, a coloned terrace near the cuff room, eating pizza cooked in grill, Open grill, talking to guests with good readiness and mood. Later, we gathered for the evening trip. Amber (tall 6ft), mounted on a trimming Mare named Milonga, explained how the horses we would ride have an extra walking, a type of trot, and that we had to board one hand, raising horses to change horses.

Cuzco, my mountain for the evening, brought to a useful rock and I climbed. The saddle, which was somewhere between the European style and the West, was covered by the thick and forgiving skin of the sheep. We set off on the hills, our feet washing on long, bright green plants with yellow flowers that released a strong herbaceous aroma. “This is the wild mint,” Amber said. She showed a big bird, a karancho (Carcacara crested) by dipping on top of a granite stone, and a pair of small scratch owls standing at the grass near their homes. I’m not sure she could have said a sparrow from a great home Tit.

Our small steeds climbed on the stone paths with a safe leg that would shame our pet horses at home. Within minutes, I felt I could trust cuzco to take care of us both, letting me drink in the big landscape. Pachi Oviedo, Gaucho leading our journey, turned back to ask “gallop? “and set off on the whitewashed grass. Saddlebags.” Sundowner, someone? “

Kevin Begg, whose family owns Estaniagreeted us for drinks that evening, wearing jeans, alpargatas and a faded red Boin, Traditional Gaucho Bereta. His grandfather was transferred from Britain to Argentina in 1824, seduced by Earth’s promise. He had begun with a few hundred hectares – a pocket, in Argentine terms – and the family gradually added to her generation. One day we would ride to a picnic at the house where he grew up, he said, and from where every term was sent to a respected school of the Catholic dormitory in Southern England.

His family’s silver frame photographs tried around the main landing room; Most had become mattresses in the country. The linen squares rolled into silver rings, each carved by the name of a horse that once lived here.

His relaxed and injected into the eclectic collection of guests: British Honeymooners, a French mother and daughter, an American divorce on her first solo journey, a British businessman who had taken riding lessons in order to come to Los Pots, an owner of the French bar, Amber, At a time when we were to have fun from a pair of local ballads, we ate the grilled chicken and made further entry into Kevin’s basement, felt as if we were the family.

After the next morning, we found our assigned horses, this time Hardy Dolls This was educated for today’s task: running livestock at a food station. This is Los Pot: It is about giving guests a taste of Gaucho’s life – to work with cattle, gather new horses, eating Rais – But with cotton sheets, brilliant candles and malbec too.

The days were long and busy, painted by many meals (caramel sauce Cheesecake for tea, fresh pasta for dinner), long gallop on hills on different horses, a diving into an icy waterfall, the taste of blind wine (it turns out I am a free date) and a practical session to do Empanada AND CHIMNEY Sauce with Kevin and Claudio.

In my last morning, I gave me the honor of riding “Queen”, Agua Dulce, a rare beauty with blue eyes with attitude to match; It is usually one of Gaucho’s mounting. We climbed to the top of a hill and Amber emphasized a trio of cans circulating over the valley. She passed around the biscuits, then took a tube of sun cream from her scarves and offered me. I realized then that our roles were back.

Leave was bitter. On my last day she told me she would decide – after a claim to seek my advice – return to September for next season. I was proud that she would have been asked, sad that she would be away from home for another eight months. But after I was there to see her, I realized why it was her paradise. So, again in Buenos Aires, I bought two more pairs Bombs: one for him and one for me.

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