Our summer vacations were to go ride peruvian horses, enjoy the pool, and receive a 5 star service and attention, so we carefully chose San Pedro Viejo, because it matched all of our needs.
We had several emails and phone conversations with the reservations person,Lucia, and she confirmed the availabilityof the place, the horses, and that she would be around to greet us so having such a great telephone attention, we decided to make the reservations and took the bus out of Buenos Aires as she recommended.
After travelling 900kms (the bus was a good option to get there), nobody was there to explain to us anything, so the couple of people working at this Estancia (understaffed from my perspective),told us that the host would be arriving in a couple of days. That would be OK for us, but we needed to talk to someone about the rest of the situation:
1) there was no water when we arrived, although there was water in the afternoon, imagine our frustration not knowing if that would happen everyday!
2) there was no food served when we got there, although later we did get something to eat, meals where served in an unscheduled way, so you had to ask by what time you would eat! We travelled with our 3 daughters, being the youngest 3, common sense would help the cook figure out that dinner time was not after 10pm almost everyday. During the day, you had just too many flies and eating without having the fear of swallowing one, was impossible. Eating outside in the quincho was pintoresque, but they should do something to reduce the hundreds of flies!
3) the pool was dirty,and I mean, you couldnt see the bottom, and although its the middle of the country and some dirt would be reasonable, the color of the pool itself was not helpful (greenish gray,awful),however, because of the hot weather, we still used it a couple of times after it was a bit cleaner.
4) they hadnt payed Direct TV for some months, so on rainy days, you had no TV, although they did have many videos that you could pick from, you only needed to find something and agree upon with the other guests
5) NO CELL PHONE SIGNAL! You are completely isolated, you could get signal at Dean Funes, which is 45 minutes away, but you had no phone signal and NO PHONEs at the Estancia.
6) Of course, NO INTERNET, which on vacations you wouldnt mind, but because of my work I needed to be connected once every couple of days, the availability they offered was one of the top 3 reasons for deciding on going to sanpedro viejo.
7) The worst part was that the day we arrived, the horses LEFT! We had clearly told them that we were going there because of the horses,this was very dissapointing. They were sending the horses to Jesus Maria (an annual horse event). We had payed in advance, and we had no car, no internet, no cell so we didnt have any option of just driving away. The cook was in charge and he told us that he would be getting more horses for us. They rented horses (criollos) which allowed us to ride every day. The staff was friendly and helpfull and their attitude allowed us to enjoy and not completely spoil my familys vacation, but I would not go back and certainly not recommend it.
8) The rooms are beautifully decorated, very comfortable, but we got 2 days of pouring rain, and there was rain inside all of the rooms, we had a major problem in ours!
9) there were also a couple of useless bikes, broken down. there was only one car which they used to do the groceries shopping, which also broke down
10) Carlos, the only gaucho of the place, took us riding every day, as requested by us, morning and afternoon. He is very well experienced and extremely carefull, and he was very helpful. He tried to make it up to us, and did enjoy the every day rides. the scenery was unbeatable, the weather was hot but the wind made it tolerable.
I must recognize that they tried to make it up, but the effort was not enough.
and it is just too far away and a long trip to deepen the dissapointment.