We had shot doves and perdiz all morning and were ready for our fishing adventure. We were looking for Golden Dorado this time. Our friend Randy who used to come to Sierra Brava every year, had experienced red carpet hotels for the second half of these trips but this time he wanted something different. “I want to go on an adventure!”, he said. No problem for us.
8pm on a Sunday, my friends Luis, Randy and I arrived at our destination: a humble village right in the border of Cordoba and Santiago del Estero Province. The whole town turned around to see us coming in Luis’ BMW X6, taking pictures as if they had never seen that one before.
One eyed Carlos had guided us in the past so we knew where to find him… He had shot a lamb for our welcome dinner and after an unbelievable meal with good wines we brought and hunting tales, he showed us our room. We went to bed before the generator turned off.
There are no hotels where Carlos lives so he built a shack in his backyard with 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and chickens and roosters slept on our tin roof.
Carlos turns the generator off at 11pm every night so we had to use our phones as flashlights or lanterns after that. The room had 2 bunk beds… Luis and I slept on the ones on top and Randy on the bottom one. We left the room’s door open to let the heat from the salamander warm us up. It was quite funny to listen to the chickens walking and clucking above us.
We were woken up in the middle of the night by a dog entering the shack, trying to escape from a dogs’ fight! It was five big dogs chasing him, really. All mixed breeds. Randy, who had chosen the bottom bed, immediately covered himself with his blankets when he heard the fight right there by him! I spotted his face with my flashlight and he asked: “is this normal?”, “Yes, adventure”, I replied. Haha. We found blood all over the walls on the following day. Interesting night.
After breakfast, one eyed Carlos took us to the dock where we boarded his Honda string ignition 15hp engine boat and took off. The Dulce River is very narrow, surrounded with pure wilderness with no sight of human activity around for miles.
Soon after we departed, we started fishing but it was not good as we hardly had any bites. We were using live bait and lures and they used little balloons as buoys. The fishing experience was so poor that one eyed Carlos had to beg us not to hook his last eye with lures flying so crazily, as we were not going to be able to find our way out.
Tired of our unluckiness with the rod and lines loss, I saw a Cimarron wild boar drinking water from the shore, about 70mtrs away from the boat. I usually carry a gun when I go on these adventures, so I had my 45 pistol in my fishing bag. I asked one eyed Carlos if I could shoot the Cimarron and to be honest I am not sure if he understood I meant using a gun but his answer was positive so I hurried up, immediately grabbed my gun and shot at it. I was pretty sure that with the boat movement and the distance it was going to be either a lucky shot or a miss, as I was giving the hog some good chance. For one eyed good luck… it was a great shot. We didn’t have space in such a narrow boat so Carlos sent his cousin to pick it up and we invited almost the whole neighborhood for dinner that night.
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