It rained little in Uruguay in the first five months of this year. In early May, the government put out an alert: water stocks were low in the hydroelectric dams and we were all asked to make an effort to save energy. It's easy to do your bit: switch off a few lights here and there, avoid using kitchen machines ... it hardly affects your livelihood - but it's difficult for city-dwellers to imagine what the lack of rain really means for people out in the countryside.

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Uruguay is a country whose economy largely depends on livestock. There is good soil and fertile land along the coast and the river which borders Argentina. Here there are huge ranches owned by Brazilians - and now, increasingly, due to Argentine President Cristina Kirchner's land tax legislation - Argentines.

But in the northern part of Uruguay, along the Brazilian border, the land is infertile and rocky. You need a lot of land to survive. Mario, a sheep and cattle farmer, told us that with his 1000 hectares (2,500 acres), he just manages to eke out a decent living for his family. No holidays, but a decent education for his four kids.

But last month Mario's farm ran into trouble. Because of the drought, his cows did not have enough to eat on his land. He had to separate the cows from their calves - fortunately he had enough supplement to feed the calves - and find a solution for the cows. He managed to find a piece of land a hundred and twenty kilometres away which he could rent for his cows to graze on.

He had no money to transport the cattle by truck, so his fourteen-year-old son Guillermo set out on horseback with a seventy-year-old friend and a gaucho, for the five-day trip with 120 cows.

The way it's done here is that at the end of the day the gauchos find a homestead and depend on the hospitality of local farmers who offer them a corral for the cattle and a barn to sleep in. On the hoof the only food is meat, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But on the fourth night the long-awaited rain came - with a vengeance - and Guillermo and companions were unable to find hospitality, so they spent the entire night in the saddle.

When we saw Mario and family yesterday things were looking up for them: there had been a lot of rain, and Guillermo was looking forward to going out again to bring the cows back home.