A YouTube travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a day trip to La Peninsula estancia in Patagonia. The hosts visit the Singular Hotel, take a boat to the 18,000-acre estancia, ride horses, observe sheep herding and dog training, watch a ram being sheared, and reflect on the beauty and authenticity of the experience.
Sam.
We are very sad that we are leaving Patagonia today, but are full flight is not until 12:45 tonight. Technically we're leaving tomorrow, but our host Richie from Chili Tour would not let us sleep without one last awesome day in Patagonia. So he's taking us around.
We're going to another estancia today called La Peninsula and we have to ride a boat to get there. I think we're running slightly late, so we gotta go.
Takes you down inside.
Whoa.
Our first stop of the day is the Singular Hotel. It is a luxury five star resort right outside of Puerto Natales. And it's made in this really old warehouse. So the outside looks like, but the inside is the craziest thing I've ever seen. All the walls are glass, so you can still see the exposed brick on the warehouse, but it's like really sleek on the inside. And there's elevators that take you like outside to the next building. This is so crazy.
So the family that owns the Senor Hotel is the same family that owns the estancia that we're going to. And this is where you come to take the boat to the estancia.
This is so cool.
Which is why we just randomly stopped at a hot.
Sam.
Good morning, Ian.
We made it to La Peninsula.
Have a coffee. Because without coffee, nobody works.
This place is amazing. It looks fake, like something you would see out of a postcard. The sun's rising. The grass is like this beautiful color. There's geese, horses, white horses. It's incredible.
This is great.
Welcome to Lebanese Cheers.
The morning is off to a great start. We learned that this estancia is 18,000 acres. And now we're gonna go horseback riding. But first we have to catch the horses. This is so fun.
This is lunch. Nice.
It cooks for like three and a half hours.
This is awesome.
This is all recycled from all fences, like cricket fences.
Wow.
We just got to go in the barn and look at all of the saddles. They're all so different, like the ones from Argentina and the ones from England and the ones from Uruguay. It's so crazy. But I think the Chilean one's my favorite because it's the most comfortable. Now we're going to catch the horse.
Ian is doing his horse whispering magic in here. He said they have all white horses because they look the best. And I agree. It's so dreamy, this one.
Let's go.
Sam.
Sa.
So we just rode up to a scenic lookout. Now we've come down to find some sheep. While we were up at the lookout. One of the sheep was really struggling, but it actually worked out really good for us because we got to see a condor up close. It was, like, circling its prey. It was crazy. And now we're going to go around on some sheep with some really special.
Dogs giving the horses a little water break.
There's so many.
What I want. I want to cross them. Cross them to the other side of the river.
Okay.
Sa.
It.
I think I redeemed myself from yesterday's drone footage. We successfully got the sheep from one side of the river to the next. All in a gaucho's work.
That was amazing. Every once in a while, I mean, it should probably happen more often, but, like, every once in a while, I just have these moments.
We call them our moments, where it's.
Just like, this is why we stay up super late making vlogs. Like, I don't know. It's just one of those, like, I just pause. I quit worrying about everything for, like, 30 seconds, and I just, like, take it in. And this, like, that whole experience was one of those moments.
Just one of those times where you're like, I can't believe this is real. And I'm actually riding a horse on a ranch in Patagonia, and it's this beautiful.
That's it. That's the moment. It's like, I cannot believe this is my life.
It's like we step out of ourselves for a minute and just, like, look at what we're doing. Like, Nate said, it should happen more often, but there's certain times where Nate. I can see this little twinkle in his eye. You had a moment today.
We're getting really deep here, but it's because Richie is doing such a great job of bringing us to these amazing places, giving us the authentic experiences. Ian, the gaucho. I don't know if you consider him a gaucho, but he seems like one. He's just, like, the coolest guy ever.
Knows so much. I mean, this is his life. But I feel like he doesn't even feel like he's working. He just is so good at what he does.
He lives on this ranch. I wouldn't trade lives with many people, but I would consider trading with him now.
I think it's time for lunch. Today just keeps getting better.
Here with the dog we have Bonita is over here.
And Huggy, the white one, is the puppy, and he's learning.
So that's the way we train them. You see, we have a puppy, and they follow the older dogs, and they start learning everything you can train them on their own, but it takes much more time. This is much easier than just learning, Right. While I'm working, I need to get the sheep out of the mountains and there is forest and everything. So I cannot always go. I just send the dogs and they bring it, right. That's the first thing they learn. They bring to bring the ship to me. It's not so hard to train. We train mainly three commands. So one will be barking.
It'll be.
And stopping.
Long whistle. They stop doing whatever. Now with rams, they keep going because Ramsay.
The other one, I will show you on the way back. But it's a short whistle for them to go and bring it.
Right.
With those three things, you can already work pretty much. You can send them, stop them in the middle, make them bark, come back. These are barbuccio magallanico, translate Magellan bearded collie, if you want to add it. So they come from all the dogs that the British brought 100 years ago. When they start, when they first brought the ship, they brought the Scottish men too, because they will know how to work with sheep and they will come with their dogs.
We had a delicious lunch with a lot of the people who are staying at the Singular Hotel. They take a boat over here and do like a day tour on the island. And we just got a demonstration from Ian about the dogs. We learned about how awesome they are, and now we're going to go see them shear a sheep, a ram.
So what we do usually is the sheep come from the back. They go out in this door. We take them out and get shear here, and they go under the shed right afterwards. The wolf stays here and it goes to this table. Where there is a person is a classifier, so he will tell you the quality of the wolf.
So this one has the belly already here.
Usually we do it very quietly.
Because, well, you need to be very careful.
The first, like, two minutes that he had him on the stage, the ram was fighting him, like, trying not to get shaved. And then as soon as he started, he just kind of relaxed and just accepted his fate. He hasn't bought him since. So crazy.
We're just soaking in our last few minutes of fresh Patagonian air on this island. This is our last adventure before we leave Patagonia.
It's been amazing. And this was, like, the perfect way to end it. It's hard for me to say that this was our best day in Patagonia because the glacier trek was amazing and.
Just everything is so cool in Patagonia.
Yeah. But this has been amazing.
This has been such a unique day. I'm so glad we had this opportunity and stayed with Richie. It's just been awesome. I hate that we have to leave.
But we have cool adventures planned.
We do.
One last one.
Oh, it's so good.
Horse's name is Nevada. Just like the state.
They want him gambling.
