Norte de Córdoba, Córdoba
Río de Piedras
A shooting lodge in the hills north of Córdoba, fifty minutes from the airport, built around nine double rooms and a gun room.
Río de Piedras sits eighty kilometres north of Córdoba city, in the rolling country where the grain fields run into the monte. It is a shooting lodge before it is anything else: nine double en-suite rooms, a room for cleaning guns, and a bar stocked with Argentine wine.
The day has two halves. Breakfast at half past seven, a drive of thirty or forty minutes out to the field, a bird boy to each position and a guide moving between them. Lunch is cooked over a fire where you are standing; the afternoon session runs until the light goes. Dinner is early, back at the house.
The birds are eared doves — the size and colour of a North American mourning dove, with the dark patch below the ear that gives them the name, and a flight that is fast and straight. Córdoba holds them all year. The lodge works a rotation of forty fields within a thirty to fifty-five minute drive, and rotates them deliberately rather than shooting the nearest one twice.
At the table
A full breakfast before anyone leaves, an asado at the house at midday, and a sit-down dinner of regional cooking at the end of it. The bar is open throughout: Argentine wine, local craft beer and spirits.
The house, point by point
The rooms
Each one was decorated on its own terms rather than to a scheme. All are twin, all have their own bathroom, air conditioning and a window onto the garden. Linen, towels and daily housekeeping come with the room and are not itemised.
Where everyone ends up
A long sitting room with the fire going, a dining room laid properly, and a covered gallery along the garden side. The gallery is where the evening usually goes, with a glass of something and nobody in a hurry.
The grounds and the pool
Private ground on every side: cut lawn near the house, native monte past it, and a full-size pool with the deck to lie on afterwards. It is where the afternoon goes on the days nobody goes out to the field.
The table, and the bar
The day starts with a full breakfast before anyone leaves, and lunch is an asado at the house. Dinner is a sit-down affair with regional cooking and some care taken over it. The bar is open: Argentine wine, local craft beer and spirits, included rather than counted.
What there is to do
- Dove shooting, morning and afternoon, with a bird boy to each position
- Forty fields in rotation, thirty to fifty-five minutes out
- Shotguns for rent: 20-gauge Benelli semi-automatics and over-and-unders
- Trips into town for shopping or the local historical sites
Where it is
Within reach
Villa del TotoralThe nearest village
Where the shops are, and the local historical sites.
Estancia Santa CatalinaIn the same corner of the province
A Jesuit estancia founded in 1622, and one of the sites UNESCO inscribed in 2000 as the Jesuit Block and Estancias of Córdoba.
Aeropuerto Internacional Ingeniero Ambrosio Taravella80 km, about fifty minutes by road
Distances as the property and its public listing state them. We have not measured them ourselves.