Argentina has many surprising works of public art and architecture. We passed a few of them along our way. There were some unusual pieces of art, such as a gigantic ugly statue in a roundabout, a very large metal sculpture of a bicyclist by a bike path, as well as a stupendous new dinosaur museum in San Luis.
This was near a science museum.
After a long-ish day we found our hotel in Rio Cuarto, on the outskirts of town. The Plaza Mayor hotel is arranged around a nice pool, even if it was not very clean during our visit. We have a large room, big bed and new-looking bath. I’d rate the bed one of our best so far. We are at the far end of the building, and the wifi doesn’t work, but who knows whether it works elsewhere. There is an in-house restaurant that serves dinner from 9-11:30 pm. I guess we’ll see whether we stay awake long enough to have dinner.
Details: Weather started overcast and 70s, became clear through 1 pm and then increasing clouds, high in the high 80s. Traffic light, several tolls.
We had breakfast at Maria Antonieta, very good cappuchino. I had a submarino, hot milk with a bar of chocolate melted in it. Very nice, though I might prefer it made with coffee. American style breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon (pancetta) and orange juice for JH, but they had no scones, so I drank my submarine then went next door to Delicia (or something similar) and bought wonderful tiny cookies, lemon gel filled chocolate dipped shortbread and chocolate dipped, manjar blanco filled star-shaped sandwich cookies, both with a walnut half on top and without. A great midmorning snack.
We returned to our apartment, 488 Martin Zapata, Mendoza, and loaded up. Carolina arrived in time to say goodbye and we headed for Rio Cuarto, navigating first out of Mendoza and on to Route 7. It runs east-southeast across the valley and is definitely wine country.
Along the way we saw a variety of birds and we were definitely on the pampa, wide open spaces of high scrub, fields of corn, beans and alfalfa, and herds of cattle and sheep.
Because of the vagaries of the roads, we could not go on the most direct route, but had to work around one area. We drove to San Luis, then on toward Villa Maria. Our map didn’t show all the roads and we had to guess a bit, but we ended up on the correct route and made it to Rio Cuarto by 4:30 pm, 488 km.
We went to the Walmart looking for an adaptor for the Argentine wall outlets, and failed to find one, but found roast chicken and decided to opt for that vs. the restaurant that opens for dinner at 9 pm. We watched “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. I didn’t realize that Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel were in it (or John Malkovich or that long haired English guy I’ve seen in something else). We laughed a lot.
Llywindatravels 2022 