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COVEY RISE: Los Laureles 2024

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Check out our story about Los Laureles, featured in the December-January 2024 issue of Covey Rise.

LOS LAURELES

The treasure of Argentina.

STORY BY MILES DEMOTT | PHOTOGRAPHY BY TERRY ALLEN

Humans have always been fascinated with rivers. We travel on them, hunt on them, fish on them, even do laundry in them. There is an inherent sense of adventure about them, as if an unknown treasure or an undiscovered colony lies just around the next bend. We explore this fascination in movies (Apocalypse Now, Sahara) and books (Heart of Darkness, Huckleberry Finn), and we marvel at the feats of engineering that enable the crossings and the journeys. While this is not a river story, our journey begins and ends along the Paraná River in Argentina. Part of the fifth largest river basin in the world—behind familiar names like the Nile, Amazon, and Mississippi—the Parana wends its way through Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina for almost 5,000 kilometers, supporting all manner of humans and wildlife along the way, including ducks and golden dorado. I consider the possibilities from a comfortable chair alongside a toasty firepit that offers a hilltop view of the vast river below, and they seem endless.

The lodge is Los Laureles—outside of Cerrito in Entre Ríos Province, Argentina—a quick flight and short drive north of Buenos Aires. I have been, for many years, an avid consumer of the Argentina narrative, the mysterious land where dove darken the skies and ducks slide into ponds en masse. It’s the same tale that cautions against taking your own gun: “Better to melt theirs from all the shooting,” they say. For these and other reasons, I was and remain an enthusiastic fan of the mixed bag hunts and the cast-and-blast itinerary. This was my first trip, and I can heartily and simply report, “That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

To be clear, I am not a volume shooter. The notion of shooting shells by the case makes me hurt all over, not just in the shoulder. I might describe myself as a ratio shooter, since I’m more interested in a birds-per-box number. To his credit, Ruben Duarte, who joined me as guide for the week, never got impatient, sensing the method behind my madness. Ultimately, I had the best ratios among our group, even if I shot a fraction of the birds and shells. But the birds were there for the taking, and that’s the part that was so remarkable. More accustomed to late summer dove shoots across the Southeastern United States, where empty cans often outnumber birds sighted, I was almost paralyzed by the sheer density of birds that flew over continuously, with no regard for activity or motion on the ground. The challenge was to identify a target within a flight of 50, and the temptation was simply to lob a shot blindly into the middle. I chose the former over the latter, but it took some getting used to. Ruben was patient and even smiled at my success.

I recounted the story that evening to John John Reynal, owner and host at Los Laureles. I expressed my confusion about expectations, that I thought guides would be anxious to push more shells through the guns since there was probably a small revenue stream for the lodge. “That is normally the case with lodges in Argentina,” he said, “and I will happily let you shoot all the shells you want, and the lodge will make more money. But that’s not the point for us. We want guests to experience this place as if they own it, so guests decide how much they want to shoot, not us. Our job is to put them in front of the birds without pressure to shoot beyond their limit, whatever that is.” An uncommon perspective for a lodge, admittedly, but one that deserves an unconventional explication. Los Laureles will meet conventional expectations, to be certain. The birds are plentiful, as are the shooting opportunities. The lodging is first-rate, as one might expect, with incredible views, grazing sheep, firepits, and hammocks strung between palm trees for the late afternoon breezes. The bar is stocked, the staff is friendly and accommodating, and the food is, well, Argentinian, which is to say extraordinary by every measure. Bring the larger of your belt options. You’ll need it on the flight home. All of these things are true, but most, if not all, of them might also be said about other lodges. So let’s set that as the baseline and build our unconventional description from there.

First, the birds, ostensibly the reason for the trip in the first place. In addition to being plentiful, the diversity is incredible. Gamebirds include dove, pigeon, ducks, and perdiz, and you harvest those to the limit of the law or until your rotator cuff falls clean off, whichever comes first. But the non-game species are also compelling, since North American hunters and birders don’t normally see those species. This heightens the experience because it broadens a shooter’s awareness and sharpens rapid identification of target species. Shooting pigeon over decoys, for example, is not only a weirdly interesting experience, but the sky is full of dove and parakeet and a dozen other species, so you have to hone the skills to track and separate the target species for that hunt in real time.

Next, the dogs, absolutely an essential part of the hunt. To point and flush perdiz, we hunted over Brittany spaniels named Maximo and Tom and a German wirehaired pointer named Otto. While their skills were different, each brought a productive enthusiasm to the alfalfa fields we walked. The real treat, though, was the quiet relationship between the dogs and the handlers. There was an unanticipated calm about the work. It really shone through in the duck blind, when we hunted with five-month-old Hannah, a German wirehaired puppy with twice her weight in energy. Her early retrieves were decoys, and she often brought back the stick that was thrown to direct her to the duck, but Cefe Godoy’s patience was never lost, and Hannah’s enthusiasm never waned. I’ve experienced similar situations where either the guide’s or other hunters’ anxious expectation of perfection cast a pall on the fun. While the dog work was near perfect on most hunts, a puppy’s enthusiasm is contagious on a brisk morning, and so is a guide’s patience.

Chill is an overused adjective, but it’s apt in connecting the guides to the larger staff. There was a sense of calm and quiet competence that comes from one of two places, or both. First, most of the staff have been with Los Laureles for a dozen years or more, some as many as three decades. Not only do they know the drill, they enjoy the work and the people they work for. Second, weak spots in the daily hunting experience are lost in a bottle of Malbec and the promise of better birds tomorrow. “It’s the balance of controllable elements,” says Reynal. “The weather and the birds are out of our control, but the hospitality is firmly within our control. And we make sure to get that part right.” And getting that part right starts at the top.

Aldo Machin has been with Los Laureles for 30 years, currently serving as lodge manager and overseeing daily operations. To use a uniquely American phrase, Aldo is good people. His wry smile and wicked sense of humor are the tip of the iceberg. He also cooks duck that is not only edible—something I’ve never been able to do—but incredibly delicious. But he is not a chef. He shuttles guests to and from hunting blinds, but he is not a guide. He gathers around the firepit and the supper table to fuel the conversations, and then he magically disappears as the evening wanes and the guests retire to the firepit to overindulge in whiskey, cigars, and hyperbole. But that’s another story. Aldo is the fixer. He makes airport runs, hospital runs—that, too, is another story—and gun runs, if just the right side-by-side is needed for pictures. I’d like to think that we were special, but I doubt that. Aldo seems to treat everybody like family, and with the help of the lodge staff and guides, he’s very good at what he does. Nobody knows this better than John John Reynal.

Reynal grew up in the world of hospitality. Son of a race car driver and grandson of a professional polo player, JJ spent his formative years on an Argentine ranch, hunting and fishing and enjoying the fruits of a money tree that would soon begin to wither. His calling to the hospitality industry, while admittedly a natural fit, was the offspring of necessity. His family story on both sides is the stuff of legend, but you’d never know it. He has built a business around extraordinary hunting and fishing, and the secret to his success is no secret at all. It’s all about the people, on both sides of the equation. Finding the right clients and retaining the right personnel to deliver uncompromising service to those clients will bring referrals and repeat business, and those are the heartbeat of any enterprise. Reynal describes the model as a simple triangle. “I take care of the staff,” he says, “the staff takes care of the clients, and the clients take care of me.” While money is part of that transaction, there has to be more to it than that, and one gets the sense that Los Laureles exemplifies an exchange of value for value, with the staff, the clients, and the experience. That may sound like too heady a proposition when all you want to do is fly to Argentina and shoot dove until your teeth rattle out, but he has found an audience that understands the nuance and is attracted to that value.

Reynal’s clients have discovered that, like many epic tales, there is an Argentine treasure to be found if you follow the Paraná River far enough. From a distance Los Laureles may look like the others, a working ranch with a picturesque hacienda and postcard-worthy views. The price point may approximate the others, give or take, and the offerings may be conceptually similar. There are only so many types of gamebirds and fish in Argentina, after all. Look closer, though, and you’ll see the difference. It’s the concierge service, the delicious food, the hot towels at the door to wipe away the dust of the hunt, the perpetual fire in the den that warms the morning and reflects the day’s events into the evening. It’s a thousand little details that have one thing in common: people. The journey to Argentina is a long one, even with the miracle of modern flight, and it’s nice that every detail has been, to the extent possible, considered, anticipated, and practiced by a staff that has been happily in place for many years. Sure, the skies still darken with dove and pigeon, and the duck hunting is extraordinary. The secret, though, is Ruben’s enthusiasm for the hunt, whether we’re shooting a case of shells or a box. It’s Cefe’s care and love for a young dog that instills patience in guides and guns alike. It’s the calm warmth of hospitality that Reynal has cultivated among his team that makes the difference, and it’s worth the journey.

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