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Published: January 29th 2010
Alta Gracia
Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara.We arrived in Cordoba on the morning of the 25th via the 11.5 hour overnight bus. The bus ride was good, clean and actually left on time. We were happy to have booked our tickets in advance so were able to get the panoramic seats in the front and therefore did not have anyone reclining on us. We were also nicely situated far away from the toilet which is always a luxury! (Recommendation: Flecha Bus).
We were booked into ´Cordoba Hostel´ prior to our arrival and happy that our reservation was secured. Our room was nice with a private bathroom and balcony over-looking the courtyard and pool (which is amazingly smaller than the photograph on the website depicts). The room was a little pricey at AR.100/2ppl/night (Argentinian Pesos: USD = approx. 1: 3.8). We have begun to accept the inevitable increase in costs but still look for ways to hang onto our dollars a little longer like utilizing the kitchen at the hostel whenever possible.
Cordoba is HOT! The heat is unreal and unforgiving reaching the mid to high 30s everyday. We have found ourselves needing to shower 2-3 times a day both out of necessity and as a
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´Villa Nydia´ - Che Guevara´s boyhood home. nice way to cool down. I have only been to a few places like Argentina where you sit and sweat even at midnight. (It is funny though feeling like the Bundy´s from ¨Married With Children¨ hanging out in the supermarket and shopping mall just to escape the heat 😊 The city has been losing power for several hours every day, forcing stores to close, our room fan to stop and beers to go warm. According to the ´Buenos Aires Herald´: ¨...several provinces have been facing power cuts over the last weeks, amid a heat wave that is affecting most of the country and increasing the use of energy. Residents in Córdoba province are being affected by daily power cuts due to a fault in an energy transformer. EPEC, Córdoba province’s energy company, has been carrying out two three-hour blackouts a day as the heat wave continues. Energy is being rationed because the faulty transformer caused a 25-percent reduction in the amount of energy available.¨ So it´s hot and everyone is suffering (not that I´m complaining - I definitely don´t miss the Canadian winter!).
It is strange being in Cordoba as it looks just like any city that could be
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Villa Nydia. found in Canada or the US. The people don´t look distinctly different from us as in most countries we´ve been to, there are McDonald´s restaurants all over the city, and a lot of the prices for things such as coffee, water and clothing aren´t any different. (I don´t care much for paying Canadian prices in South America, it just feels wrong). I have also found the people here to be very business-like and less patient than in some of the northern countries; they also speak very fast like the people in Central America making it very hard to understand. I don´t think we will be spending as much time in Argentina as originally planned but am still happy we made it.
I am especially happy we made it to Cordoba because of ´Villa Nydia´ - the reason we came here. ´Villa Nydia´ was Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara´s boyhood home located in the town of Alta Gracia, just 30km south of Cordoba. The house, located at Avellaneda 501, was built in 1911 and named after the youngest daughter of the first owner of the house, Nydia; the name was later changed to Villa Beatrix after the Guevara family moved in; Che
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Che as a boy. lived there from 1935-1937 and 1939-1943. In 2001 Villa Nydia opened its doors as "Museo del Che Guevara" and is considered a heritage site by Alta Gracia. It was really interesting and worth the trip. The house is small and filled with pictures, documents and personal possessions of Che and his family. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far for me.
Alta Gracia is a much bigger town than I expected and we were a little disoriented when arriving via local bus without a guide. It was much cheaper for us to pay AR.6/person for a bus ride than AR.80/person for a guided tour. Thanks to an information booth and signs all over the town directing tourists to La Casa del Che, we managed to find it and were very happy we didn´t sign up for an unnecessary tour group. While in Alta Gracia, we also toured the Museum of Jesuit Estancia which was very nice and interesting.
Other than that, we haven´t accomplished too much here in Cordoba. We tried to book a rock climbing excursion but were unsuccessful. It is weird that you don´t see tour companies in the city and
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Che´s medical school certificate. the odd ones you do find don´t even offer tours themselves, they are merely the in-between contact who finds out whether or not a tour is possible. Perhaps we will be able to do some more climbing at our next destination - Mendoza is supposed to have a lot of different trekking and climbing opportunities. We leave for Mendoza tonight on the overnight bus which will lead us into Chile within the week. A planned quick visit to a couple locations then back to Argentina (or so we believe at this point) - we never know for sure 😊
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