San José de Metán

Yesterday we drove from friendly, hot, dusty, & industrial San Ramón de la Nueva Orán through endless farm country to Joaquín V. Gonzales. We saw plenty of ostrich along the way.

In J. V. Gonzales we glanced briefly at the Hotel Colonial, drank a cup of coffee at the rundown Hotel Mallorca, & decided to drive on to San José de Metán. What a pretty city. Many lovely homes. A conversation with 2 policia led us to a good restaurant, Date Gusto, where we ate an enormous platter of parillada al horno along with the requisite ensalada completa & a bottle of 2007 Quara Tannat.

We suggest you skip the Hotel Solis, where the overwhelming smell of wax in the halls somehow didn't warn me not to accept a grim room with no window to the outdoors (we'd been driving a long time & couldn't find another hotel). We suffered bad WiFi, dim yellow lighting, no power to the AC, a shower faucet handle that came away in the hand, minimal water pressure, & a brown liquid in the breakfast coffee cup that only barely resembled coffee. On the other hand, the muchacho who flipped the AC circuit breaker & unlocked the garage was delightful.