Day: October 12, 2025

We are staying at Hotel Buena Vista outside of San Juan. While we were eating breakfast this morning I saw a beautiful bird and managed to get a good picture. It’s a Great Kiskadee!

I’ll insert a picture here of Duke and Jo Ann discussing what route we should take back to the parking lot. We are overlooking Ullum Dam Reservoir at the point where we decided to turn around

After breakfast we drove to Ullum Dam and did a hike. We were planning to hike to some caves along the shore of the lake. But after hiking up for about half a mile we decided that the trail was too steep so we turned around..

Next we drove into San Juan and visited the cathedral. Then we had coffee and alfajores at a coffee shop nearby.

A few blocks away we visited the house where Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was born. It is now a museum. The guy who told us about Saramiento educated us about Sarmiento and his many accomplishments since we knew nothing about him. He lived in the 1800’s. He was a president of Argentina, an ambassador to the U.S. and an educator and he did an amazing amount of things for his country.

We drove back to the hotel, played cards and then later had dinner at a nearby restaurant, La Coquette.

Tomorrow we will drive to Mendoza.

Saturday we drove south to San Juan. Before leaving San José we had breakfast at the same wonderful place as yesterday, Edesia. All the food is top notch but the fresh squeezed orange juice is devine.

Driving south we saw only one or two people in total along the road. The terrain in this area is a lot like Nevada.

We have been seeing red shrines everywhere along the road.

In San Juan are staying at Buena Vista Hotel about ten miles west of the center. The hotel is beautiful and very comfortable.

After checking in we did a winery tour at Bodega Merced del Estero. It is a small family owned winery. The tour was just the four of us. The guides spoke English well. We tasted three wines and learned a lot. The tour was absolutely the highlight of the day.

I won’t be posting any pictures on the blog for a while. I am having troubles with WordPress, my blogging software. The media storage is full and I need to go through and reload many of my pictures from three years ago with a lower resolution. That will take me a lot more time than I usually have when traveling. I’ll come back and add pictures when I have time.

If you would like me to create an Apple and / or Google photo album of our trip let me know.