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Published: June 30th 2008
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So, with heavy hearts but slightly lighter backpacks we headed to Retiro, the enormous bus station in BA for our overnight bus. Usually I would be dreading such a journey but we had heard great things about Argentinian buses and were not to be disappointed. We were travelling on the top class of bus where the seats recline into full beds. There was a stewardess who served dinner (ok but rather like airline food) and drinks, gave us blankets and pillows and woke us quietly the next morning with breakfast and coffee, albeit already sugared.....why does everything have to be so sweet around here!?
We arrived into Córdoba, Argentina's second or third city depending on who you speak to, around 6.30am and stumbled into the chilly bus station. After booking our onward tickets we set off to find somewhere to stay and took a room at the first place we found which was also able to let us straight in for an extra hour's sleep and a shower before we headed out. Córdoba is one of the oldest cities in the country and is famous for being the centre of Jesuit teaching. They founded the first University in the country
and only the third in Latin America there in the early 17th century, and the city grew up around that along with Jesuit estancias in the surrounding region which produced food and made other goods to be sold to fund the university.
We spent a very cold day exploring the city, much of which is just another city but the area around the original university and Jesuit church are lovely. We popped into the Museo de Belles Artes which is in a beautiful old French style house and had a small but interesting collection and saw a crypt built by the Jesuits but only within a few years of them being expelled from the country (long story which, I think, was essentially the doing of the King of Spain) so it was never actually used. Later in the day we took a guided tour around the university and church with a very enthusiastic woman who seemed to be mainly self-taught but was clearly very proud of the history and the Jesuits involvement. I have to admit I knew very little about the Jesuits but they appear to have been a very open and liberal group who therefore upset the
more conventional Catholic church in many ways but one of their main beliefs was a free education for all right up to university - something you have to admire them for! The oldest surviving Jesuit temple is next door and is remarkably simple outside but a feast of baroque inside. The roof was made by a shipbuilder - it's not clear what he was doing in Córdoba which is a very long way from the sea - and is made of wooden panels transported huge distances from Misiones Province. The shiny gilded wooden alterpiece was made in pieces in the same area and similarly transported to Córdoba to be fitted together like a jigsaw. Amazingly the measurements were so accurate that you cannot see a space between it and the walls.
We were quite concerned that our first day in Córdoba had been excessively cold to the extent that neither of us really felt that we had got warm all day, despite wearing most of our clothes. However, the following day things warmed up a little and we took a trip out to the Punilla valley to the west of the city. The small bus was remarkably comfortable compared
with the local transport we had been used to in Central America and still only cost for a 2 hour journey the same price as my return bus ticket to work. Our first stop was at La Falda after passing through a number of fairly unpleasant looking resort towns. La Falda was bigger and tattier than we had expected but we headed up the main street towards the hills intending to climb one of the smaller ones. However, our trip through the town resulted in us accumulating a group of local, mad, stray dogs who seemed to have a death wish as, in between running around between our feet, they chased every car or motorbike that came down the road. One of them insisted on running in front of the cars and already had a nasty wound on one paw. And if cars slowed down at all (it would be hard to have the nerve to keep going at speed) they started biting at the wheel arches! As many of you know, I am not a dog fan, in fact on a good day I dislike them and am generally terrified of them. At one point I ended up running
into a shop in panic but they all just sat outside waiting for us. Eventually we made it to the end of the town without seeing any of them squashed in the road and they calmly sat and waited for us as we decided which path to take. There was clearly nothing much we could do to get rid of them so we set off with them all padding ahead of us. Despite following a signpost, we soon ended up running out of path and retraced our steps to try a different direction. This path was incredibly steep and narrow with huge steps to be climbed over which was not quite what we had been looking for and eventually we abandoned that as well and took a much wider horse track for a while. This wound around the bottom of the hill but still gave great views of the valley and we perched on the side of the path in the sun for a snack with the dogs laid out all around us.
From there we wandered back into town, dogs with a death wish going for all the cars again, as well as upsetting the dogs in every
house that we passed - it's amazing, every house has at least one dog, and often up to 3 - my worst nightmare! We were early for the next bus so we stopped in one of the few open cafes (it's low season at the moment & most places seem to be closed) with the dogs all dozing in the sun outside. They came all the way to the bus station to see us off but finally we left them wandering a little lost around the bus station!
Another half an hour on the bus took us further up the valley to La Cumbre, apparently a sleepy town at the best of times but during siesta time in low season there was hardly a person in sight. It's much prettier than La Falda and surrounded by rolling hills. We climbed a small one to a 7m high statue of Christ looking out over the city with, you've guessed it, another dog in tow. This one had much less staying power though and abandoned us after we failed to feed it at the top.
After a meander through some of the quiet streets enjoying the sun we returned to
the bus station to catch a bus back to Córdoba. We were expecting it to take only a couple of hours but unfortunately we got on the bus doing the school run which stopped every five minutes and also went a very long way round via an even uglier resort town so we didn't get back into town until around 7.30pm, rather exhausted.
We took a shorter trip out the following day to a town south of Córdoba called Alta Gracia, famous for its Jesuit estancia from which the rest of the town grew. The building is now a museum of furniture and working items from the time with the kitchen still there and very clever sanitation system which took human waste from the toilets directly to fertilise the surrounding fields - how sophisticated. They also built a small lake, the water from which was used to drive mill wheels for grinding corn. From the estancia we walked through some of the residential areas to see a house that Che Guevara spent a number of his childhood years living in. This is now a museum which had not received rave reviews so we passed by, instead going into a
small house which had been the home of Manuel Falla, a Spanish composer who had moved to Argentina in the 1940s. He had mixed with a number of other well known artists of the time, in particular being friends with Jorge Luis Borges and the story of his life was quite interesting.
And then it was back to Córdoba for a couple of hours before the next overnight bus.....for the next blog.
Hope you're all enjoying Wimbledon - great upset here that Nalbandian was knocked out so early. Come on Andy.....
Lots of love
S + H xx
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Ross
non-member comment
Jesuits
Definitely the first time I've ever heard them described as a very open and liberal group!