Estancias by Marc Zakian

Villa Maria rises above the shimmering pampas. A Tudor mansion on the Argentine grasslands? Surely a mirage. But this how the Argentina’s beef barons celebrate their status - by building houses of European elegance on the land they pioneered.

My host, the effervescent Eleanora Anchorena, welcomed me at the door. Villa Maria was created in 1923 by a moustachioed cattle king trying to impress the woman he loved. ‘For a Argentinean woman, the chequered marble floors, stone doorways up to ceiling and stained glass windows must have seemed like a fairytale,’ says Eleanora. ‘When I was a child, I used to visit my cousins here. We’d play hide and seek in the house. I lived in Europe and the States for twenty years, but when I discovered that Villa Maria was for sale, I came back to Argentina and made it my family home’.

Outside the house a carriage pulls up. Eleanora is passionate about the garden, and shows me round on her vintage horse-drawn chasse. The tree-park was created by the Capability Brown of the Pampas, Charles Thays. “Everybody loved his designs - you can see his work all over the country,” says Eleanora. “His garden breathes life into the house. It gives it strength and harmony. Thays brought 300 different species of matures tree from around the world; Elms, Elder, and Flame Trees which burst into bloom in December”.

As the sun rolls down over the pampas, I join the other guests on the terrace for an asardo. This is Argentina’s national dish: lean beef and lamb grilled over a wood fire. Visiting an estancia involved being part of family for a day - a family which invariably eats drinks and talks deep into the night.

To the north west of Buenos Aires, the flatlands give way to green hills of Cordoba. Secreted among the sierras is La Paz, a 19th-century colonial house built by a former president of Argentina. La Paz may mean peace in Spanish, but the local fauna have other ideas: the park runs to a constant soundtrack of diving kingfishers, leaping carp, and the honk of geese patrolling the lawns.

The Estancia is owned by the four Scarafia brothers. In horse-mad Argentina, where there are four there is a polo team - and the Scarafias are a quartet to be reckoned with. As well as playing, they run national competitions and breed top class polo horses which are coveted throughout the world.

I was invited to ride with Marcello Scarafia and his twelve year old daughter – whose age I was the last time I ventured onto a horse. Fortunately Cucumber - a tan colour crillo horse with a blissfully sweet temperament - knew how to convince a city gringo to be a gaucho. We forded the Ascochinga river that runs though the estancia for five miles, rode though cattle fields where black Angus cows gave us a doleful once over, and penetrated forests where eagles and Rhea deer range. Horseback is the best way to go in Argentina.

Patagonia is a land of myth and mystery - the deep south of the Americas, where desert steppe sucked dry by winds meets the south Atlantic. Along the coast is Peninsula Valdez, an embryo-shaped plateau attached to the mother continent by an isthmus. Rincon Chico is a sixteen-thousand acre working estancia tucked into a corner of the Peninsula.

The Olazabal family have been wool farming here for four generations. Six years ago Agustin and Maria Olazabal began taking in a small number of visitors to their ranch. Rincon is blessed with five beaches where you can get up close with some of the continent’s wildlife - penguins, killer whales and seals.

An encounter with an elephant seal is heavyweight and malodorous. Creeping towards the sixteen-foot four-ton leviathan, I was a fly to be wafted – dismissed with a casual flick of a flipper. But the bull had no time for tiresome tourists. After bloating themselves on squid and fish, the colony come ashore to moult, digesting gutfuls of food. As I got within smelling distance, I realised that what I thought were grunts, were actually tumultuous belches and flatulence.

As I headed by back to ranch, the sheep were being rounded up by Rincon’s gaucho Jose Canilon. Jose is the great grandson of South American Tehuelche chief. Like many of the native people, Jose works the land. But after experiencing problems with a tumultuous horse, Jose is the only gaucho in South American who herds sheep on a mountain bike.

An hour down the coast from Peninsula Valdez is Los Mimbres - a snug estancia run by Marcella Plust and her family. They offer Argentine hospitality at its most congenial, with Marcella’s mother preparing home cooked Patagonian food and husband boating visitors on bird-watching trips along the snaking river Chabut.

Los Mimbres was built a hundred years ago by David Williams and Chabut is more Welsh than Spanish. In 1865 the Mimosa sailed from the hills and valleys to bring Welsh pioneers Patagonia. The Galensos - as the Argentines call them - brought their language, religion, music and culture.

A hundred-and-fifty years later and the heart of Welsh Patagonia beats strong. The names of the local towns ring with Celtic pride: Port Madryn, Trelew and Dolavon. In the little town of Gaiman Tegai Roberts – great granddaughter of the founder of the colony – runs a museum dedicated to the history of the Welsh in Chabut. In an accent fresh from the valleys she tells me tales of a hardy brotherhood which struggled to farm an unyielding land bedevilled by wind.

In the Casa de te Gales, Waitresses with names like Claudia Jones and Sian Lopez poured me thick brown tea and piled my plate with welsh cakes fresh baked from recipes brought over on the Mimosa. The tea house was more hacienda than Mrs Jones’ front room, and yet for all their incongruity the Welsh tea shops of Gaiman sum up Argentina: a country which took the best bits of Europe, and mixed them together in the most extraordinary landscape.

If your idea of a holiday involves consuming the world’s leanest roast beef and the sweetest of lamb; ambling round a giant farm; hard days of work out watching gauchos branding, lassoing and shearing, then falling asleep to nature’s soundtrack, a visit to Argentina - estancia-style - is for you.