South America Day 30 - Alta Gracia and Villa General Belgrano

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Today we are going on a road trip with Wilma. First, breakfast. It’s very healthy – there’s more fruit on the breakfast buffet than I’ve seen in the whole of the past month. The benefit of sharing a hotel with professional sportsmen.

We set off for Alta Gracia, a small town 24 miles southwest of Córdoba. It is the home of a 16th century Jesuit ranch (now a museum) and church. After a quick climb of the clock tower for a birds eye view of town, we visit the various Jesuit buildings.

On the outskirts of town, is the childhood home of Che Guevara, now a museum. It documents the course of his life with plenty of photographs, original letters and documents. My favourites are letters written by little Ernestito and ‘La Poderosa’ - the motorcycle he rode on his travels round South America in his youth.

We continue a further 30 miles to Villa General Belgrano. It’s the most German place I’ve ever visited (and I used to live in Germany!)

For lunch we go to Fritz & Franz for knackwurst and sauerkraut. To be honest, F&F aren’t that hot on food hygiene; the tables are left dirty for ages, and each time customers leave, a flock of pigeons descends to pick over the scraps. So basically we’re eating surrounded by pigeon poo.

After lunch we wander round town, visiting some tacky tourist shops with all manner of German kitsch, the town hall (which looks like a Swiss music box) and the site of the Oktoberfest.

We return to Córdoba, stopping at Los Molinos reservoir to view the dam, where a huge body of water drops 60 metres into the river below in a roaring torrent.

In the evening the lovely Wilma does our laundry. We return to the hotel tired and happy after a lovely day. It’s short lived as we realise our credit card has been cloned. Next follows a ridiculously expensive call to Barclaycard, who freeze the card. Without it, we can no longer hire a car in Chile (ironic as it appears the card was cloned by someone from Hertz) so the there will need to be a drastic overhaul of the next leg of our journey.

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Comments

[Gillian]

Scenery!
What a disaster with money you have had, such a pity. The scenery is stunning