Villavicencio

The switchback road that Mendoza's Villavicencio mineral water prints on every bottle of water sold in Argentina leads, after 48 hairpin bends, to a shuttered grand hotel — the Hotel Villavicencio, built in 1940 in mock-colonial style, abandoned in 1978, and now a national monument being visited by condors who nest in the cliffs above the terrace. The spring that feeds the water brand still flows into the mountain, and the route over the Paramerillos Pass continues into high Andean terrain where nothing else is for 80 kilometres.

Villavicencio is a mountain location in Mendoza Province at 1,800 metres altitude, known as the source of Villavicencio mineral water — one of Argentina's most consumed water brands — and as the departure point for the Camino del Año (Road of the Year), a historic Andean crossing road built in the nineteenth century that traverses the Precordillera. The Hotel Villavicencio, a historic monument designed by architect Arturo Civit in 1940, operated as a thermal spa resort for aristocratic Argentine families until its closure in 1978 — the building is now owned by the Danone corporation (which owns the water brand) and maintained as a museum and the site of a secondary spring bottling operation. The surrounding natural reserve protects condor nesting habitat — a permanent population nests in the cliffs above the hotel — and the road over the Paramerillos Pass provides access to one of the most dramatic geological sections of the Mendoza Precordillera.