Ovejas

After two challenging, but nice weeks in the area of Montevideo at Claudia's and Rafael's place we took a bus to Cardona, some 150km northwest from Montevideo.

Travelling with busses is quite popular in Uruguay and the bus terminal is organized like an airport with gates, boarding times, and for sure a lot of shops. The bus was really comfortable with even much more space for the legs than in Iberia's flight from Madrid to Montevideo. Therefore we enjoyed the 2 and 1/2 hours travel in peace and quietness, wondering how it would be at Estella's place, our host for the next 10 days. Meeting Estella at first sight was like meeting a hurricane. We were jumping into her big Pick-up and she started talking and sending us with her money into some stores to buy bread, milk, and other food. How much?- We had no idea. Where would we going to stay, when would we come the next time to a store? The pace was high, the farm 25 km outside in the countryside, our room in a separate building of the farm was cold and quite dirty, the house Estella is living in is somewhat untidy and smoked from the open fire-place, the kitchen was a complete mess. We had to fight with our european standards. And we managed to do sucessful. There were around 350 sheeps, 200 cows, 50 chickens, and 8 dogs. We were shepards, feeding lambs without mothers, trying to rescue a calf and a cow, helping in slaughtering chickens, collection mandarinas directly from the tress, and repairing the broken water pipe from the wealth to the house, after having no water for a day.

After some days, Estella's father came also back home from some hospital stay and we realized even more, how busy Estella was to run the family farm business.

It was demanding, impressive, freezing cold in the night, with great times in the nature and being and talking with Estella about her life on the farm and her dreams of another life were highly appreciated.