Brazil on Horseback: A Journey Through the Serra Gaúcha

When in gaúcho country, do as the gaúchos. So I tried anthropomorphism on Mourão, my aging gelding. Judging by his gait, maybe I should have purchased him a hearing aid first. Then Paulo, my riding partner, and a true gaúcho, prepared a small tree branch for me to use as a makeshift whip. I couldn’t find anything about that the Articles of Faith, but it did seem to get Mourão’s attention.

Paulo Hafner is a former advertising executive. Fourteen years ago he and his wife Ângela, an engineer by trade, abandoned the urban rat race to start Campofora, the only tourism operator in Brazil to offer horseback riding 365 days a year. Campofora is based in Gramado, in the rolling hills of the Serra Gaúcha in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, snuggled up against Argentina and Uruguay. Gramado and its sister city Canela seem almost bucolic – almost un-Brazilian in their peacefulness - once you get away from the busloads of chatty old ladies who allow themselves to be herded from one overdone tourist trap to another.

Perhaps the best way to get some distance between yourself and the masses is to mount one of Paulo’s horses. In English, Campofora means “cross country,” he reminds me. Soon you’ll be encountering waterfalls, rivers, and flat-topped Paraná pine tree forests. “We ride off the beaten track to see things that can only be seen on horseback,” he says. “We probably have the most beautiful part of the state for riding.”

But the journey is not only, or even principally, through space. The true expedition is in spirit. Most of Campofora’s riding trips run from one to seven days (though longer stays can be arranged). By day two, you’ll have left behind the jet-propelled throb of rock-and-roll, and even the train-like beat of the urban blues, to enter the pre-internal combustion pace of the rootsy chamamé (who’s best-known contemporary practitioner is the Argentinean accordion player and composer Chango Spasiuk).

That the soundtrack of a Brazilian riding tour be played by an Argentinean musician should come as no a surprise. The open ranges of the pampas, and the culture that developed there, cannot be fenced in by national boundaries. As in the American West, activities like roping, branding, and cattle driving acquired a mystique that permeates the entire the region. “The gaúcho is the South American cowboy,” says Paulo. “Everything about the gaúcho came from cattle raising.”

After his horse, nothing is dearer to the heart of a gaúcho than a down-home barbeque. “We eat lots of meat, very good quality beef,” says Paulo. “ Our cattle comes from European and British breeds – like the Hereford. Our meat is the best in Brazil.”

You can get a taste of the gaúcho’s culinary ritual at all-you-can-eat rodízio-style steakhouses like Fogo de Chão, a chain now established in many cities around the world, but the best churrascos are never in restaurants. (Topping my all-time list is one grilled out behind the Oficina São Borja, an autoshop in the Azenha neighborhood of Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul. My invitation to that greasy feast had been extended by Antonio Augusto Fagundes, guru of the state’s nativist movement. Among my fellow guests was Leonardo, a best-selling composer and performer of popular gaúcho folk music.)

Fogo de Chão holds strictly to the tradition only by name. Literally “ground fire,” it refers to the “churrasco na vala” or pit barbeque. Cowboys would dig a hole in the ground and roast their meat inside it on wooden sticks. According to some accounts, they would rest the flaps of their saddles against the meat, allowing the salty horse sweat to drip into it as seasoning.

While he doesn’t use that trick, as far as I know, Paulo can whip up a pretty mean churrasco. During the excursions, dinner is prepared at one of the farmhouses where the troop stops for the night. Mid-day grub is served somewhere along the trail, under a tree or beside a spring. At mealtimes someone invariably produces a hand-held gourd of chimarrão - yerba-mate tea. First discovered by the Guaraní, the region’s original inhabitants, chimarrão is shared by people sitting in a circle and passed from hand-to-hand (not unlike the way other cultures enjoy a different, smoldering weed). The gourd is filled with boiled water for each person in turn. Sipped from a metal straw, the gourd must be emptied before being passed along. And it is OK to slurp. It proves that you’re done.

Back in the saddle, you’ll be riding what Brazilians call crioulos. “They’re the same as your mustangs, the descendents of the horses brought to the Americas by Spanish settlers,” says Paulo. “Brazilian cowboys used the crioulo for working the cattle ranches.”

I grew up in suburban Los Angeles, so my image of the mustang - courtesy of Ford – falls somewhere on the far-side of feisty. But riding a crioulo is nothing like a car commercial. The crioulo is tame, perfectly suited to leisurely outings in the countryside. You can believe Campofora’s brochures: “No previous horseback riding experience is necessary. The only prerequisite is the desire to come along.” Paulo claims to have received about 9,000 visitors from 38 countries – many of whom had never before ridden a horse.

Indeed we stressed-out urban interlopers have the most to gain from a few unhurried days on the range. As Paulo likes to say, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” Or, put another way, there’s number five of the Gaúcho Articles of Faith: “The most urgent matter is the one that you should take slowly.”

	Horseback riding in Rio Grande do Sul