The ranch is located next to the RN 40, between Gobernador Gregores and Las Horquetas. You can recognize it by a large truck that has been painted “Santa Thelma Ranch” on the box. It’s a picturesque and effective advertisement, like almost everything in these areas that the French have Marc Antoine Calonne knows it like no one else.
In fact, when he arrived in 1997, his original intention was not to become a host, but to embark on an adventure: to cover the 22,000 km on horseback. from Ushuaia to Alaska. In Santa Cruz he began looking for good horses and exploring the area, and he liked it so much that winter caught him before he could leave the province.
He returned the following year – and the next – and so the first six years passed. In 2004, he realized that the project had changed almost unintentionally. Every year he left his horses on the ranch Menelik (in the Perito Moreno NP area) and I returned to look for them and continue the exploration.
He bought a ranch – La Numentina – in 2009 and a woman named Thelma encouraged him to purchase the current field, so he named it after her.
Born in France and trained in Ivory Coast, Calonne began working in equestrian and tourism in 2008 and gradually made a name for himself, especially among Europeans, who make up a large part of his audience.
Given the valuable “background” he acquired during his long seasons in the Santa Cruz Mountains, that’s almost a given Saint Thelma ended up becoming a species Adventurer Barracks: If you want to set out to get from one point to another – especially on horseback, but also by bike – you end up unfolding maps and scribbling route sheets. It is also the ideal place for those who want to explore the steppe with an expert.
Rustic but very warm, the living room Saint Thelma It looks like a small cultural center. All languages are heard and experiences are shared: those traveling from south to north write down comments and suggestions for those traveling in the other direction.
While Marc-Antoine feeds the fireplace with logs, he fills the glasses of his passengers and his wife with wine Isabelle De Marcellus – puffed up to her head but unable to shake her cold face – she has finished preparing the side dishes that accompany the roast lamb served in the shearing shed, which is the main course for vegetarians (lucky to find this variety in a region where, if you’re lucky, you can get a salad of lettuce, tomatoes and carrots). Decorated with sheepskins and lit by a few lanterns and candles, the atmosphere is extremely cinematic.
Marc-Antoine and Isabelle are great in their role as hostshe tells his story, she with her long blonde hair peeking out from under her wool hat and boots. He rides with vigor and smiles as he explains that he doesn’t speak Spanish. She was an actress – and it shows – and now she’s a yoga teacher and art consultant.
During the season, he accompanies Marc-Antoine for a few weeks before returning to Paris, where his children and professional commitments are. He, on the other hand, speaks our language very well and is happy to have left his life as a tax lawyer behind to cultivate the profile of a Patagonian gaucho. This is how it is presented and seen in various notes and online sites Patagonia: Visions of a GentlemanThe book he edited sold more than 10,000 copies in French and was published in two editions (1999 and 2004).
“I was tired of advising people I didn’t like to engage in financial maneuvers in order to become even richer than they already were. I’ve said enough,” he says happily. When he returned to France in the Argentine winter, he had another major project on his plate.
In 2020 he bought his country’s largest mill, called Moulin de Ruffin. A construction of 9000 m2 which was abandoned after a fire in 1919. “More than a hundred years ago, flour production stopped,” says Calonne, who gradually recycles it and wants to give it new life: first he made it available as a furniture warehouse, then he set up a small bar and exhibition area and also adapted it for weddings and events.
Accustomed to challenges, this handsome gaucho, with whom he has become very familiar, remains silent as he listens to his guests enthusiastically recounting the preparations for their great exploits. When he began his adventures, there was no internet or cell phones, and he knows full well that you can see the pingos in the field. “We want to go to Colombia,” some English people tell him. And he murmurs quietly in a French accent: “The most important thing is not how far you set your goal, but how far you actually go.”
Saint Thelma Route 40 km 217. T: +33 6 11 99 66 72 Good stop on the RN 40. Open from November to the end of March. It has 4 rooms with private bathrooms in the hotel, two with shared bathrooms, 4 teepees and a small house-like truck. Out of $270 Double room with half board in rooms with private bathroom, $230 in standard and $170 in the tipis (with bed). The three hour trips $65 per person.
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