Córdoba

What a lazy week I´ve had!

I arrived here in Cordoba on Monday, and today is Saturday. I realised yesterday that, guess what, I´ve only got another 6 weeks in South America, and I really need to get a wiggle on if I want to do everything that I´d love to do in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Quite a scary thought, really, having so little time. But I still find myself in Cordoba, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with more than enough time for some reflection on the week just past.

Looking back on what you have done during a week as lazy as mine can be rather tough. Not due to over indulgence or excess partying, rather the days almost melt into one another. I spent Monday writing a bumper travel blog about Buenos Aires, and exploring Cordoba´s city centre. Cordoba has such a different vibe to Buenos Aires, and I actually prefer it here. The downtown core has a web of busy pedestrian only streets, but the overhead vines and trees give it a softer feel than Buenos Aires. The fact that there are seven universities here also adds an extra dimension, with young people absolutely everywhere. The age demographic is definitely rather skewed here, with hundreds of thousands of students, many of them living in Neuvo Cordoba, just south of the centre. The student population gives a great vibe though, with people teeming on the streets at all hours of the day and night. Perhaps partly due to the numbers of people out and about, the centre of Cordoba also feels very safe. Walking back to the hostel at 4 am in the morning from a club is no problem at all, and you don´t see as many homeless and destitute either. Another cheery thing about Cordoba is the expense. It is considerably cheaper than Buenos Aires, which for penny pinchers like me is rather nice. The only problem is, that because everything is so cheap, you find yourself eating out all the time, and then at the end of the day you find that perhaps you spent more money that you probably should have.

Over breakfast on Tuesday I met Eileen from Germany and Jennifer from Holland, and we spent our sunny Tuesday walking around Neuvo Cordoba. We had quite the walking adventure (right now a man has come into the internet cafe, and is playing his harmonica really loudly. He doesn´t even look like he´s leaving anytime soon, so I blame him for my bad clarity of thought), touring through Neuvo Cordoba before stopping for pizza in the middle of a roundabout. It was such a beautiful, sunny day, and we were all rather tired (Eileen and Jennifer had arrived that morning on overnight buses), so we went to Sarmiento Park, where, by the looks of things, kissing and cuddling was the done thing. Deciding to break the mold we all fell asleep in the sun for a couple of hours. I was rather chuffed when I woke up to find all my personal possessions intact, and was rather happy about my lack of stab wounds. I think I might have gone out on the Tuesday night. Surprisingly, it wasn´t very busy. We wanted to go to this Reggae club, though apart from the two guys sitting on bar stools, it was empty. Instead we went to this pubby club next door, which was playing lots of Argentinian popular music, with UV lights and lots of beer.

The hostel that I´ve been staying at here in Cordoba is rather nice, with a great common area. The only thing that really annoys me about it is the free breakfast. Normally I´m a fan of things that are free, but in this instance I am most certainly not. So on Wednesday morning, after skipping breakfast at the hostel, Jennifer and I went for a lovely breakfast down the road, and this sweet cafe, where we drank our real coffee and ate pastries like sophisticated young people. I then met Eileen back at the hostel, and we went off in search of the minibus terminal, where we hoped to catch a ride to a nearby town. Cosquin, West of Cordoba in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, was an hour and a half bus ride away. We arrived there at about 2 in the afternoon, to find the streets of the small town rather deserted. After having a quick bite to eat in a restaurant, we started our hike. We came to Cosquin with the intention of walking to the top of a nearby mountain, where our Lonely Planet told us there was a chairlift and a Carlos Gardel Museum. I had been feeling rather sick of cities, and it was great to get out into a small town, and then out of the small town. We walked for a few hours, first up a road through an area of hobby farms until we hit the mountain proper and had to start up a dirt road that zipped back and forward up and around the range. On our way up, cars would pass, the drivers throwing out a smile and a wave as they sped past. The landscape was very beautiful though, with medium height scrub stretching across the range. If I tilted my head to the right 12 degrees it almost looked as if it could be Australia.

Once we had reached the top we realised to our dismay that the chairlift, that takes people from the saddle of the hill to the summit, was closed. It looked like it had been closed since the late 70s, but so did the 60s style restaurant, the painted menu offering peaches in the ´natural style´for dessert. However, the souvenir shop was open, where you could buy a curious assortment of South American-esque products, ranging from wine to knitted ponchos. The lad that was working at the souvenir shop (in truth the back of a garage) didn´t seem to know if the chairlift worked, perhaps a bad sign. Eileen and I toyed with the idea of walking up to the summit, but in the end we settled with photo ops from the saddle. The walk back to Cosquin was interesting, as we were both rather low on energy. Somehow we managed to keep plodding along, singing Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie style), the Hey Arnold song and a range of other soulful bushwalking tunes. After stumbling back into Cosquin we grabbed the next bus to Cordoba, my tiredness catching up with me as I fell asleep.

I managed to meet up with Facundo, from Narrabundah, that evening. We ended up going to Mega Doner with Moran (from Israel) for dinner, before heading back to the hostel where there was a bit of a live music jam happening. Later that evening we went to a bar with Sue (Ireland), Eileen and Jennifer, where we did some crazy couch dancing before falling asleep in our drinks.

1st of May in Argentina is Workers Day. Which means, for us travellers, empty streets, closed restaurants, no supermarkets and a generally relaxed atmosphere. Some people go crazy, but with a pair of feet there is plenty of walking to be had. After lying on a bench in the park, under the beautiful sun we explored a church. In the afternoon I think I ate pizza. I even went to bed at 7pm, thinking that I was going to get up later for a big night. That gave way to a peaceful 10 hours of sleep, which was very much needed. I woke up the next day with enough energy to get organised at a reasonable hour, with my sights set on the small town of Alta Gracia. 35km south of Cordoba, Alta Gracia is where Che Guevara grew up, and is also home to the Iglesia Parroquial Nuestra Señora de la Merced (built by Jesuit fathers in the 17th Century) now a museum. I went to Che´s house, also now a museum, before going for a scenic walk through the rural outskirts of the township with Ben from Adelaide and Tina from Seattle. I was really pooped by that evening, but for some reason I was talked into going out at 2am in the morning. We went to the reggae club that was empty earlier on in the week, but this time it was packed. For the 10 peso cover charge I got a 1 litre cup-o-beer and some sweet moves on the dancefloor. By the time four o´clock came around I was getting a touch weary, so I hit the hay.

That was last night, and so far today I haven´t done a whole heap. I´ve bought my bus ticket, direct to Santiago, for tonight. I hope I can sleep like a bub, on the bus so I can be jovial and jocular in Chile. I´m a little bit sad about missing out on Mendoza, but I really haven´t got that much longer in South America, and there are quite a few things I´d love to do in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, which I have to make happen. I think I might spend only a nominal amount of time in Chile, before taking a tour from San Pedro de Atacama through the salt flats to Uyuni, Bolivia. But we´ll see. That´s just speculation at the moment. I look forward to seeing Sandy in Antofagasta soon - that should be fun, though at the same time I won´t be able to spend very long in Antofagasta. Oh well, when I come back to South America I´ll do all the things that I missed out on this time around.


Hearts and Minds,
Mark

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