Areco, Most Gaucho of the Argentine Pampas

Like a giant inkpot knocked sideways, the black horizon rolled toward our hydrofoil on its 31-mile run between Uruguay and Argentina. Strobe bursts of lightning cracked the bruised sky, then thundered the impending collision.

This was the notorious pampero blowing up from the south, a chilling storm that killed 19th-Century travelers caught on the Argentine pampas without a tree for shelter.

Although inside the hydrofoil we were dry, real safety appeared as distant as the unseen shore out there somewhere beyond the waves and rain battering our windows. With a shudder, the craft sat lower in the Rio de la Plata and bobbed aimlessly for 25 scary minutes until the pampero howled on to Uruguay.

I have visited the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires many times, but on this trip I wanted to kick back on a dude estancia near the 18th-Century cowboy town of San Antonio de Areco, home of the silversmiths who create gaucho-esque belts and bridles for kings.

I wanted to hop a small plane out to Martin Garcia Island, the old naval prison in the estuary where Evita Peron’s preserved body was secreted at the end of the runway for three or four years when the military feared that her body would become a cult symbol. That was before she was reburied in Italy.

Beach Village

Now Evita is in Recolleta, the necropolis in Buenos Aires’ most stylish downtown district, and Martin Garcia is a tourist attraction with a hostel for those who want to stay longer.

As for the beach village of Colonia, Uruguay, I could happily have spent days, not just a day-trip, puttering around its curious museums before jumping onto a rental moped and heading to the beach.

Colonia, population 10,000, is no ordinary resort town. It is an artfully preserved, 307-year-old Portuguese contraband fortress that was the bane of Spanish Buenos Aires.

Built on a tiny peninsula that measures about seven blocks by seven, historic Colonia gives the freshest view imaginable about life as it has been lived on the shores of this great, odd estuary that opens into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Plata’s pinkish-red waters are seldom out of sight as you walk along cobblestone streets, waters that reach the horizon like an ocean of jungle-red mud slurried from the interior of Brazil by three of the continent’s largest rivers, the Uruguay and the merged Paraguay-Parana.

Portugese Museum

Uniforms from the 1700s, along with rifles of that era, graceful furniture made of jacaranda wood, Lisbon ceramics and common household items are superbly displayed in the Portuguese museum on the old Plaza de Armas. Moreover, the square building itself is lovely. Stone walls create their own patterns and polished wooden ceilings angle in interesting ways.

Streets are also angled, following the Portuguese plan for defense whereby invaders couldn’t aim straight down a street. Colonia’s resulting curves and irregular blocks are a far more aesthetic legacy than the Spanish grid design.

Charmed by the differences, Argentines have been crossing the Plata to renovate weekend homes for many years, perhaps accounting for the quality of the charm. Quaintness like this costs money--witness Carmel and Taos, similar “villages,” except that Colonia is simpler. Chevrolets from the ‘30s polished to concours d’ elegance perfection, not Packards, are parked along curbs shaded by pruned sycamores.

On weekends many residents are likely to be out digging for Indian artifacts and the bones of prehistoric creatures such as the Lestodon trigonidens. You might not discover that unless you go upstairs in the Municipal Museum on the plaza and see the bird, butterfly, beetle and dinosaur collections gathered by inspired students of Dr. Bautista Rebuffo, 80, long after they graduated from his natural history classes at Colonia’s high school.

Filtered Water

As for swimming in the pink slurry, why bother? About three miles out of town where the sandy beaches (also pink) begin, at a series of five big ponds, the river water has filtered into granite cavities called canteras --clear, wonderful water to swim away the oppressive humidity of an approaching pampero.

Water poses a different situation from that of the Plata when you head out across the Argentine pampas to La Bamba de los Aldao, a newly opened dude estancia with room for up to 14 guests. It is the only dude ranch in the region and not always available.

On a rainy day you can’t drive out to the 1830 estate for a stay in grandeur, or even have lunch and a horseback ride, because the last three miles to the cattle ranch are pure dirt, the famous pampas topsoil nearly 1,000 feet deep without a pebble down to its core.

All is not lost, however, because the highway is paved into the nearest town, San Antonio de Areco, population 20,000.

Cowboys Gather

Built around a stagecoach stop at Areco creek in 1725, San Antonio is considered the most gaucho of all pampas towns, particularly from the Saturday before Tradition Day, Nov. 10, to the Sunday afterward, when cowboys gather to play a little rodeo, breaking horses for the crowds and so on.

The old stage stop is a wax museum saloon, while across a park is a replica of an estancia manor of the 1700s, protected by a moat and small cannons. Furnishings in the stern Spanish mode come from the neighboring ranch house of the late Ricardo Guiraldes, author of “Don Segundo Sombra,” a gaucho classic grounded in realism.

Yet gaucho realism developed grand embellishments very early, a historical fact that should please shoppers. When the president of Argentina wants to give state gifts to dignitaries such as President Reagan and the King of Spain, he contacts San Antonio’s master silversmith, Juan Jose Draghi, for accurate renditions of harnesses, stirrups, elaborate silver cups shaped like gourds for sipping mate tea and even more elaborate daggers and sheaths.

Typically, gauchos used daggers rather than pistols, tucking their weapons into a rastra, a belt as wide as a gunslinger’s belt and holster combined. This girdle functioned somewhat like a wear-your-own bank, with silver coins chained to the leather.

Ghoulish Allure

Draghi’s workshop and showroom is at Gral. Alvear 345. I bought a slightly less expensive ($130) belt linked with 1826 silver coins from Draghi’s former apprentice, Horacio Bertero. His showroom is at Belgrano 40.

Martin Garcia Island, on the other hand, has a ghoulish allure. In this subtropical microclimate, where temperatures are 5 to 10 degrees warmer than in Buenos Aires, military prisoners worked off their sentences chipping granite blocks to pave the streets of the capital, labor that began in 1811.

The quarries are oozy green lagoons now, and the prison is a roofless adobe rectangle with no cells. Modern naval training barracks, support buildings and tennis courts are in better condition, but abandoned too.

Only 1 1/2 miles wide, this rocky tip of a submerged mountain has a vivid history. In addition to various naval battles, two exiled Argentine presidents finished their terms under guard in a spacious house that is a rosier pink than the Casa Rosada, the presidential headquarters in Buenos Aires.

Legendary Dictator

Before taking over the government, Juan Peron, the legendary dictator, was held captive in the schoolhouse for four days until he feigned illness and escaped.

Martin Garcia is a national monument and a nature reserve, but I didn’t find it as interesting as I’d hoped in either respect. The three-hour excursion boat (each way) is a closed vessel, so there’s no way to sit outside and really enjoy meandering through the tangled green islands of the Parana delta where smugglers once hid.

Martin Garcia should be last on your list, yet I’m glad I made the trip. I took the regularly scheduled plane over to the island, which gave me a 15-minute, broad view of the Parana and Uruguay rivers joining in the estuary, while the 27-mile voyage back put the view into perspective. Argentina’s island of exile is a long way out in the Plata.

All too often, travelers pass through Buenos Aires in a loop around Latin America, squeezing in the plains city between the spectacles of Iguazu Falls and Machu Picchu. Those are hard acts to follow, even with tango, superlative steaks and bargain fur coats designed in Paris. Still, if you have the inclination, shortly beyond the boundaries of Buenos Aires humanity and nature have created sights that compete.

These excursions can be arranged on your own, with many details available at the government tourist kiosk on Florida (the walking street) in front of Harrods department store in Buenos Aires.

I get good prices from Andrew Macfarlane, an amateur historian and president of Macren Travel, a small company used by U.S. agencies (Florida 734, 2nd Floor).