Flip-flopping over the freshly mown grass to the wooden sun loungers, we gazed out over acres of lemon trees. The perfectly parallel planting created a stylised backdrop to the slimline swimming pool. This was fruit farming Wallpaper*-style and the vision of Argentinian architect Sergio and his partner, Mario. Based 9km outside the Unesco World Heritage Site of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, the couple neatly combine cultivation with comfort in the shape of their elegant posada, La Casa de los Limoneros.
It was day one of our road trip and my friend Annabel and I had taken the Buquebus ferry from Buenos Aires over the limpid brown waters of the River Plate to Uruguay. This low-slung little country in Argentina’s backyard has one of the most glamorous stretches of coastline in South America, peppered with hip seaside hotels, tiny fishing villages, gastronomic retreats and, it turns out, ‘designer’ farms alongside more traditional estancias.
Uruguay might not have the big-gun attractions of its neighbours – there’s no Amazon or Andes here – but, if you want to sample sizzling steaks, meaty wines, wild white beaches and cattle-trampled interiors, this is the place to be. And since most of the country’s three million inhabitants live in the capital, Montevideo, the roads are virtually empty: it’s perfect road-trip territory.
As the Argentine skyscrapers grew fainter, the huddle of Colonia del Sacramento came into view. Sergio and Mario opened La Casa de los Limoneros last year. The original plan had been to convert an old estancia into a boutique hotel. However, when they couldn’t find a ranch they liked, they decided to build their own. With its creeper-clad façade and landscaped gardens, nobody would guess it hadn’t been here for centuries.
In fact, the aged feel is not just an illusion: they found the guest rooms’ veranda doors in a reclamation yard in Montevideo while most of the antiques and retro pieces scattered around the posada came from local flea markets. It’s a mix of quirky finds and Modernist pieces: the ‘country’ kitchen has mustard and coffee-toned tiles with a medley of copper pots hanging from the ceiling, while the elegant living room features a more contemporary angular red sofa and graphic art.
After a couple of hours lazing by the pool, Annabel and I drove into Colonia for dinner. This old Portuguese settlement is a warren of tree-lined cobbled streets and pastel façades. It doesn’t take long to wander the little alleys, snap the picturesque vintage cars and drift into incense-filled churches (many visitors from Buenos Aires do it in a daytrip). As the sun set, we followed crowds down to the waterfront to watch it sink into the swirling café-con-leche waters, the slick skyline of Buenos Aires on the horizon, before retreating to an umbrella-fringed courtyard for supper.
Our next stop, about an hour’s drive along the evocatively named Highway 1, was La Vigna, a boutique hotel-style estancia owned by another Argentinian architect. Agustin and his wife Lucila bought it as a holiday home but decided to take in guests a year ago. Lucila, glamorous and blonde in a boho way, floated across the lawn to greet us. After being shown to one of just five ‘rustic chic’ guest rooms (a line of milk churns on one wall, a soap dish made from the tines of an old garden fork), we met Agustin in the restaurant for a cheese tasting.
‘Ours is the only farm in Uruguay to milk sheep,’ he told us. They make five different kinds of cheese: a feta, ricotta, Manchego, Roquefort and Parmesan-style cheese. It’s also the only farm in the country where you can go Wwoofing (World-wide opportunities on organic farms – an organisation set up by an English secretary in the 1970s: in return for a few hours’ work a day you get free board and lodging). As well as sheep, Lucila and Agustin have ducks, turkeys, geese and chickens, peach trees, grapes of course, figs, oranges and lemons. They even make their own limoncello. And there’s an organic kitchen garden.
