Across the wide plains of Argentina and Uruguay, where cattle raising is a way of life, men who work the livestock are called gaucho. The mainstay of their diet is meat and mate, a herbal drink sipped daylong from a dried gourd.
Skilled horsemen, dressed in pleated trousers, slouchy cap, knee high boots and woolen poncho, they are happiest traveling the expanse of sun baked pampas and circling a fire by night, accompanied by the strings of a guitar. Lonely, sad, romantic, itinerant, yearning, lost increasingly in a changing world, they remain the soul of this region.