the winter holidays in the Benja countryside in Cholila

When winter break started skeletonJust after his 9th birthday, Benjamín Guzmán went to spend a few days in Cholila with his father Franco, 145 km.

There, in that paradise at the foot of the Andes Mountains to the northwest of Chubut he was the first to get up each day and told his great-grandparents Ramón and María Luisa that he He would be in charge of lighting the little fire.

He left the cell phone to live a few days of pure nature in the snow, ride, walk with his grandfather Nobel and lend a hand to carry the bales to feed the cows and sheep and corn to the chickens.

Without forgetting the games and the pampering with Smurf and Bear, who did not stop barking and wagging their tails while accompanying him on his country adventures. Of course first things first: assembled the snowman.

Everything, at the El Destino establishment, which we recommend you book: they plan to offer excursions again, such as the horseback riding that Franco organized before the pandemic to a glacier 3 km from the border with Chiliamong other wonders.

Faithful to the tradition of the muleteers, as a good horseman, Benja learned to whistle before speaking. She likes to ride her great-grandfather’s horse. «She became inseparable from Cork. We named him like that because he is short and chubby. He is noble, resistant, meek and calm like a good Creole horse. It is ideal for him, “explains the father, Franco. But he also really likes going out with another hottie, Caramelo.

Sometimes, in the harshness of winter in Patagonia, Don Ramón lay down to rest for a while on the edge of the small fire that Benja lit at dawn and then silence reigned around him in the house that it was born from mud and wood but over time it added bricks and plaster. The heating and the kitchen, as always, are firewoodbut 10 years ago electricity arrived and since then there refrigerator and television with satellite connection. Franco installed the antennas that allow them to have Internet.

“When the light came, their lives changed,” he says. He talks about his grandfather and grandmother, María Luisa, 86 years old, who then converted the jugs and kerosene lanterns into a memory of other times. “If there is anyone who deserves to rest, it is them, they have it well deserved. But equal they stay active, because the field is their life”, says Franco, who learns from his grandfather the secrets of the trade in the field and the farmyard and from his grandmother everything that happens near the house, on the farm and in the orchard.

These days Benja joined. And so there were four generations who came together to pull the car together.