Estancia Villa Maria

A beautiful first light of the morning photo by Cedric Miller.  

I don't usually start my blog posts with a photo, but this one was too good to bury in the text. Beautiful shot, I have severe photographer-envy.

This is where we spent Father's Day weekend, a weekend away that we decided to copy from last year's Father's Day trip to La Candelaria, though this time around it was actually on Father's Day weekend. We were also joined this year by the Miller family, a great addition in every sense of the word. Here is a group shot that we took on Saturday - we're only missing one little one (who was asleep) - and Milena is proudly displaying a novel we found in the estancia's library called The Expats, how fitting.

Estancia Villa Maria is approximately 45 minutes outside of Capital, 15 minutes past Ezeiza airport. The website has GPS coordinates to plug into any GPS or Smart phone, which works amazingly well. As you're driving, just when you think you are in the middle of nowhere, you arrive at Estancia Villa Maria - and it's beautiful.

Here is the Miller family with their 2nd son, Trey

As with the other estancias that we've visited, there was plenty to do here. Between the horseback riding, carriage rides, bicycles, and the amazing amount of space available for running around, there was always something going on. Each day the estancia offered a carriage ride at 10am and again at 3pm, we rode both times on Saturday, even though the morning ride was a bit brisk. One of the highlights of our stay was how service-oriented the staff and how flexible they were with the additional needs of our kids. They served meals early for the kids and adjusted to all of our requests.

Gretchen and Daddy on a carriage ride

The rooms were spacious and a few families in our group upgraded to the suites, which were like full fledged apartments.  Our regular sized room was more than adequate for us, though the bed and the shower left a bit to be desired.  Another note, though the estancia staff was more than equipped for children, we needed to supply our own cribs.

The estancia has a nearby golf course (though it was closed for the winter) and offers polo lessons.  They have stables to house up to 80 polo horses, but only had 40 or so when we were there.
They also have a great looking spa list, though we didn't participate during this weekend.

The food was good and the selection was different than we've seen at any other estancia we've been to, though we did have a couple of items that were less than fantastic. We saved a little bit of money by bringing our own wine, though the wine that we drank during dinner was charged a corking fee of AR$30.

Aside from the service, the most appealing feature of Villa Maria was the number of sitting rooms available to the guests.  This was great for our group, that needed a place to congregate after the kids were asleep, but it also allows you to feel separated from the rest of the guests. As a little bonus, on Friday night, there was a brother and sister team that played guitar and sang in the main living room of the estancia, and they were AMAZING. I spent the majority of Friday night singing their praises as best I could in Spanish.

All in all, this was a really great estancia experience, and a place that we would recommend to friends and come back to. Here are some of my personal photos that I particularly enjoy:

Proud Fathers enjoying a sunny Saturday

Since Preston didn't make it into our group shot, here is a sweet pic of him and his lovely mom on Saturday afternoon at lunch:

One of the beautiful barns on the property

The greatest thing to the world of children, a puppy

Villa Maria from the carriage ride