Submitted by Alexandra DiDonato on the 2013 fall semester program in Buenos Aires, Argentina…
This week our group took a day trip to Estancia Santa Susana, a ranch about an hour and a half outside of Buenos Aires, where we got to ride horses like gauchos, eat delicious food and see a demonstration of some classic Argentine dances.
One of my favorite parts of the day was the demonstration of corrida de sortija.
Basically, in a corrida de sortija, a small ring is loosely suspended from a post and a gaucho gallops really fast towards it and tries to get the ring using a small stick. Back in the day, if a gaucho was able to do this, he could then use that ring to propose to a woman. Quite a few girls in our group were “proposed to” after these gauchos successfully obtained the rings!