Bishop's Water (In spanish "Agua de Obispo") is a place south of the town of Montalbán (Carabobo State, Venezuela). This is more of an agricultural and livestock area, since in reality there are few houses and the land is flat and wide, whose lands are good for pasture and crops of other types.

To get here, you have to follow a paved road that goes from the edge of the town and enters the wide valley that makes up this rural area.

After just a couple of kilometers, one begins to perceive the rural air, the people are simply there, doing their work. But everything seems to "happen more slowly". It's a place where you can stop by the side of the road and enjoy taking pictures (and that's what I love to do, as you know).

The road can suddenly become narrow, sometimes it is wider, but it always offers some enchanting view. On both sides there are some fields, cattle ranches and farms.

One nice thing about Agua de Obispo is there are cows almost everywhere. This shows that the area has recovered since the pandemic stopped, because in those dark days, the fields looked desolate and sad. However, now and despite the current economic difficulties; people here have once again taken up the raising and selling of cattle.

In the ranch "La Esperanza" you can observe beautiful scenes, very bucolic. It is enough to take a camera and approach the fences at the edge of the road. There they raise Brahman cattle, which are more corpulent and muscular than our "Criollo Limonero" cows, which are usually smaller and livelier.

And boy, can you take pictures here!.... These lovely animals seem to pose for the camera. I actually have a soft spot for taking pictures of cows, I find these animals charming. In fact, I have been a vegetarian for three decades now, as at some point in my life I felt the need to stop eating these "friends". But that's a long story and maybe that's good for a future post here on #Hive.

Thanks to the relative richness of the land, the pastures here are good almost all year round. This also has to do with the effort made by the ranch owners to invest in wells for water extraction and maintenance of firebreaks, as fires are very frequent during the dry season.

The valley of Agua de Obispo is divided by a small hill, where the road steepens slightly and there are trees very close to the banks. Some people also use this area for their homes, as it is not suitable for crops or livestock.

Within the grounds of "Isidoro" (a kindly doctor whose family has owned land here for more than a century) is this simple cross, whose date, say the elders, is more than 200 years old and corresponds to the tomb of an old friar who came to this place in the past and founded a small school to evangelize and teach reading and writing to the people of that time. It is said that with time people began to call the humble old friar "Obispo" (Bishop)... And when they give someone a nickname here, there is no way to avoid it!... So, maybe that's where the name that was given to this area comes from.

Some ranches suffered fires this year and their land was seriously affected. This usually happens because of the habit of small farmers to "burn their land" during the dry season in order to eliminate the weeds and leave the land ready for planting. Unfortunately, they cannot always control the consequences of this archaic practice inherited from their ancestors and the fire ends up devastating the pastures of the cattle ranches. This is something that constantly generates problems between people here, but no effort made by the producers or by the environmental protection entities has made some of the people use the fires to clear their land.

Many lands that are not used for livestock are already being prepared for rainy season crops (from May the rains usually start here). The advancement of these tasks is a good strategy to make the most of all the rainy months and also to achieve tobacco and corn crops in months whose market price is higher.

At the southern end of the valley, the road is dirt and very narrow, a four-wheeled vehicle can barely fit on it. However, it is a delightful thing to walk around here.

Heavens, they're buffaloes!... This is something new for me, it's the first time I've seen buffaloes in Agua de Obispo. Here there have always been cows of various breeds, but never before buffaloes. However, I know many producers in Venezuela (especially in the central and western flat land states) have been raising this type of animal for years, since they are much more resistant to diseases and their milk is also fattier and good for certain types of cheeses and other highly commercial dairy products.

Well... This young lady does not seem to have a good character!... I also remember reading that another good reason to raise buffaloes is "to be a headache for rustlers". Yes, these animals are not as docile as cows and this makes them much more difficult to steal, since the simple fact of trying to put them on a truck by someone unknown makes them irritable and dangerous. It is also well known that they defend themselves together and the "alpha" females can persecute a human and tear him to pieces if reach him... Wow, these buffaloes are careful guys!

Adults are a bit out of the way, but I can see their well-formed antlers. I think I'll have to come back another day to dedicate myself exclusively to photographing this herd... They certainly look spectacular!

There are also some sheep grazing around here. This type of cattle began to be raised here on a larger scale in the late 1990s, when some producers experimented with some individuals and were successful in breeding them.

On the way back I stop in front of "Brisas del Campo" (Country Breezes) a place better known as Alfredo's Bar... This is an iconic place and a reference point of this small agricultural hamlet. In years past it was common during the afternoons to see most of the workers and landowners coming to cool off with a few beers here. Unfortunately, the current economic crisis is very hard and now Alfredo's Bar is only open on weekends... But the entrance still looks exactly the same as it did in the 90's, when I used to come here to get a little drunk!

And this is "Kiko's house" another place whose appearance has not changed for decades... Even that old red truck is still there without moving!... This is perhaps the oldest house that remains standing in Agua de Obispo and Kiko (its owner) is someone very well known here. In fact, there is a tradition on Saturdays at 6:00 AM in this place and wich is many of the neighbors come here to chat and drink a good coffee which Kiko makes.

And it couldn't be any other way... I say goodbye with cows!... And they seem to want to chase me, maybe they think I have something to eat or they just want a photo.

Thank you all so much for stopping by and appreciating. I hope you liked this little tour of Agua de Obispo. We will see each other very soon again... A hug to all!

_{Photo's Technical note: All the photos are captured using my NIKON D7000 camera, the captures are made in RAW format and then these files are processed using Adobe Camera Raw until achieving almost all the desired adjustments and appearance and then exported as JPG... Some secondary changes such as depth, straightening, minimal cropping and adding watermarks were made using PhotoScape 3.6.1.}