I've recently come back from a 12 day long holiday at the countryside in Azul. Not much of it is new or something I have not shown before (except for the visit to one particular place which I'll tell a few things about), but anyway, I'd like to share a few of the pics I took during this trip.
The second day I was there there were very picturesque cloudy skies with clouds forming strange shapes:
A storm was threatening my very life
Ooh, rain is falling
Is there anything better than watching a downpour at the countryside?
Do you think such a small rain would stop a determined man? I suppose not, but it was impossible to know because there were no determined men to be found around. As for myself, I waited until it was over, put the boots on and went for a post-rain walk.
The stream.
Have you seen the little piggies?
I was trying to take a picture of this foal during a long while, but the heavy guy on the left seemed determined to prevent me from succeeding. Every time I pointed the camera at the foal he got in the middle. I didn't know whether it was that he didn't want the foal to be photographed or he wanted to come out in the pictures himself, but in the end I was unable to take even one decent picture of the baby horse.
This video proves how the big horse was determined to photobomb me every single time:
In the end I thought such insistence deserved to be rewarded, so I finally took a picture of the heavy dude himself. And he behaved like a true model, staring thoughtfully into the horizon and providing me with the opportunity for a great pic.
Does anyone understand this picture?
The following days the weather was clear and fresh, ideal for hiking:
(You belong on the) wildflowers
Here's one for you,
BIuebird . These are a local subspecies of flamingos. I spotted them in the stream but as I tried to approach to get a better picture they noticed me and flew away, so I took this picture. There are several species of big birds in the area like flamingos, cranes, caranchos and chajas.
This is another pretty species, the benteveo, but the picture came out pretty bad.
A thistle.
Another thistle
A field of plumerillos
Same thing, different angle
When the night comes.
I also spent time in the city of Azul -population of approximately 70,000- where I visited acquaintancies:
The cathedral (out of proportion, such an epic cathedral for such a lesser town).
The park is very beautiful although not well maintained.
One day in the afternoon I made the short trip to a very picturesque area that has small mountains, streams and beautiful landscapes. It's not far from the farm, about 30 kilometres away. It's quite desolate, except for a tiny village called Pablo Acosta. It's so tiny that calling it "village" is an overstatement, because really it is a group of 4 or 5 houses, a general store, a tiny police station which is not even permanently manned and an abandoned train station. Long ago the a train rail worked there and if it had kept working the group of houses could have evolved into a small town, but instead it was left there isolated in the middle of the hills.
The pics that follow are from that area:
Welsh forummates might correct me, but I thought landscapes like the one you can see here hold a certain similarity to some parts of Wales.
The wind wouldn't stop moving these flowers so it was hard to get a good picture of them
No trespassing
By now it was almost dark so the light was against me.
In the middle of this hills, completely outdoors and exposed to the elements, there's a very interesting and curious art exposition. It belongs to Carlos Regazzoni, who is from Azul and a very well known and recognized artist. The particularity of his sculptures is that he makes them out of scrap metal. He spends his days inside his workshop cutting, twisting and welding pieces of old ploughs, watering cans, oil drums, pipes and whatever piece of old, rusty metal serves his purpose of creating the most different figures with it (he doesn't paint them, he just leaves the metal as it is).
In my opinion the guy is a genius. In spite of the difficulty of his art, his sculptures are full of life, of movement, they are dynamic and incredibly realistic. You see them and you can totally picture the scene, what was going on at that moment. And the more you watch them from different angles, the more details you find that add to the picture.
This particular exposition is called "El Malón" and respresents an attack of indians to a white settlement at some point in the mid 19th century. There you can see indians on horseback waving their spears and soldiers -on horseback too- counterattacking with firearms. It's a pity it was almost night by then so the photos are too dark and blurry.
A soldier shooting
An indian waving his spear
A horse galloping, scaring away a bird that comes out flying
A soldier getting stabbed by an indian
There were several more soldiers and indians, but I only took pics of those.
After the art exposition I headed to Pablo Acosta, the tiny settlement I talked about before. When I arrived it was completely dark:
The tiny village, from the distance.
The old train station sign was repainted and lights were added to it. It would serve, moments later, as the scenery of one of my best pics. Behind there is a corn field.
The "bar" works also as a mini market and general store. It's a very old, historic building and it's a reference in the whole area because it's the only shop and gathering/social point in a radius of several dozen kilometers. People in the nearby area gather there to socialize, watch sporting events on TV, and there are also folkloric meetings where live groups play and people dance. Lately they built two cabins adjacent to it and they hire them to tourists looking for a peaceful place to spend a few days at.
Same, under an orange light.
From the inside. It still keeps the escence -and some objects- of the old days.
A very original scarecrow made out of bones. A bit spooky to encounter in the middle of the night in a solitary place.
The old abandoned train station is illuminated and emerges like a ghost building in the middle of the dark.
This is the photo I was talking about, which I rate among the best I took. This massive intimidating dog was playing around with another one outside of the bar. An employee of the bar commanded him to sit on the bench and he stayed still long enough for me to take this picture, which I love to bits. I find it very intriguing -if you don't know the context-, what's that big dog doing sitting on a bench under an old train station sign in the middle of the night, with a corn field behind?
And so concluded my visit to Pablo Acosta. After this I enjoyed a few more days at the farm and then went back to Buenos Aires.