Day: October 17, 2025

We had a long drive today because,in planning this trip we knew we wanted to move south from the Mendoza province towards the mountainous area around San Carlos de Bariloche. There are no towns or places to stop between San Rafael where we were last night and Neuquén where we are tonight. Google said it was about a seven hour drive which is a much longer drive than we like to do.

As we drove south today the roads were quite good and we were driving about 70 mph. Then we crossed into a new area and all of a sudden we were driving on probably the worst paved road we have ever been on. It was nonstop potholes and some of the potholes were so big and deep that it felt like you couldn’t see the bottom!

Duke had to slow down to 15 mph at times and for about 100 miles we never got above 30mph. It was horrible! Our seven hour drive ended up taking us nine hours!

Tonight we are at a nice hotel, Cyan SoHo Neuquén. We walked to dinner at Restaurante El Ciervo. I had Milanesa Suiza. Milanesa is a dish that is very common in Argentina. It has been on the menu at almost every restaurant we have eaten at. It is basically a chicken fried steak. Often they use the steak almost like a pizza crust and add cheese, tomatoes, eggs, onions and other things.

We will only be here in Neuquén one night. Tomorrow we head to the mountains.

This morning we drove about an hour south of San Rafael to Cañón de Atuel . The bottom of the canyon has a reservoir of the Atuel River in it. We sat an a deck overlooking the reservoir and enjoyed coffee and drinks. I had a lemonade. The reservoir and canyon are beautiful and the weather was perfect.

This afternoon we did a wine tasting and tour at Bodega Alfredo Roca. Then we played cards on the patio of our room.

For dinner we went to Bodega FOW and had a fabulous meal. We started with goat tongue. Next I had carob pasta stuffed with langoustine. Duke had steak and Brian and Jo Ann had pork.

People have asked us if we are seeing anything about the U.S. bailout of Argentina. The elections here are a week from Sunday. We don’t hear or see much but I did see a banner on a TV news story that said “Trump is a Peronista”.