Day 1 continued
February 6, 2014
We meet up with our New View Tours group to tour the Pampas, the wine region of Mendoza & mountains and wineries of Salta! It is our Wine Tasting Adventure with Ed Baptiste and Wendy Philbrick of Lenox, Mass. They are joining her sister Gail Davis and her husband Richard from CA & MA.
Last night in pouring rain on our first night, we navigate by taxi to a dinner at the Mirabelle Restaurant, recommended by friends who live here and in the US. Try as we might to split the order and manage the oversized portions, we were astounded by the amount of food! The Mirabelle Restaurant is one of several restaurants under one large canape, so it was easy to confuse it with other places nearby. And that is just what happened. Finally the six of us convene in one place. It was nearly 10 pm!
Filled with a wonderful breakfast from the beautiful Hotel Club Frances, we set out for the Paramo, the enormous flat grasslands area. Our reservation is at Los Patos, “The Ducks”, a ranch or a working, classic estancia. El dueno, Angel Estrada has graciously emailed us with welcome words, arranging our private transfer that will take a couple of hours to escape the capital city of 3 million – Buenos Aires.
As we check out of the hotel, our driver is waiting for us at 9:30. He gladly makes an impromptu stop for a quick look at the expansive Recoleta Cemetary. Dick wants to see the Evita Peron grave, a huge mausoleum among many others. Eva’s remains returned here after years of controversy. She is buried here with her family, the Durantes. I recall quite remember where the plot is, but a man tending the infamous cats, shows us.
The freeways are open going out of the city at this time of day. Not so in the other direction. Traffic is a serious issue here making 2 hour commutes a regular way of life.
The Los Patos sign is a small rectangle on the edge of a thin fence – easy to miss. It is a hard left turn off Rte 41 to the south and the west of the city. The town of San Miguel del Monte, 15 minutes from the estancia, has 25,000 residents. This small place still exerts a powerful influence on the government. We are on the edge of the frontier that in the 1800’s marked the border between the gauchos and the indigenous tribes.
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