Cordoba: When it´s time to party we will party hard.

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Cordoba, Argentina´s second city, is well reknowned amongst backpackers for having one of the best night life scenes in South America. And given that it houses at least seven different universities, that´s hardly surprising! The city itself is extremely pretty, with numerous cathedrals and a hefty serving of colonial architecture. Regretfully, however, we didn´t sample much of its daytime delights, too busy were we with the vibrant nightlife that we really came to see.

Given its popularity within the backpacking community, Cordoba abounds with hip, traveller friendly hostels, and, spoiled for choice, we settled on one of the smaller venues recommended by the book. We certainly weren´t to be disappointed. The atmosphere of the place was so homely, and the owner and staff so friendly that it honestly felt like staying a few nights with your favourite aunty. Comparisons to our time with Katie´s real aunt in Uruguay weren´t ill-suited. The owner, a middle aged Argentinian woman, was always sitting about with us having chats and cracking (seldom very appropriate!) jokes. On numerous occasions we´d all be sitting in the communal living room nursing various degrees of hangover and watching trash tv, when she would appear with a tray of tea and biscuits. On our second night we were even treated to a traditional home-cooked "asado" (BBQ), which besides being overwhelmingly salty, was rather delicious. One aspect of South American cuisine which has become apparent during my stay is the incredible amount of salt that they unfailingly smother over EVERYTHING. Salad, soup, meat, you name it, they salt it. Have a bit of rib eye with your salt there José. How they dont all die of angina by age 30 is frankly beyond me.

As if that wasn´t enough for a great time, we were hugely fortunate to have an incredible group of people sharing the place during our short stay. A Northern Irish couple from Portadown, a few Aussies, English, and a girl that we had briefly met in our hostel in BA a couple of weeks before. The first night was therefore predictably messy, with pre-drinks and a pizza in the hostel, and then a group outing to a local underground, grungy nightclub nearby that served the largest sangria I´ve ever laid eyes on. The glass was the size of your average farmyard trough, but cheap as chips into the bargain. The local drink of choice, fernet, was also in abundance. The best way to describe this local delicacy is a poor man´s jagermeister, with none of the flavour and all of the punch that no amount of coke can mask. Accordingly, my first glass of this Cordoban delight was also my last! Needless to say, mayhem ensued, and the next day was so painful for all concerned that nobody left the hostel until well after dinner, when we decided to visit a famous local market. Unfortunately by the time we managed to drag ourselves that far it was wrapping itself up and there was very little of the promised music and dancing on offer. Drink 1, Matthew 0.

The remainder of our time in Cordoba followed a similar pattern, drinking games in the hostel and hazy outings into the centre to at least take a few token snaps of the attractive main square. We did manage to get out to celebrate our anniversary as well with a beautiful dinner which would have cost ten times the price back home, and also sample a peculiar Cordoban cultural offering that is perhaps best left for a less public forum 😉

All was almost well that ends well, as we left content, with little more than a lingering headache and a little cotton mouth for our troubles. Or so we thought. It wasn´t until a week or so later, as we were in Patagonian Chile, that I realised my camera was missing, and the most likely explanation was a minor event in our hostal in Cordoba. On our second day, somebody´s Blackberry and another person´s mobile phone went missing from the room. Queue a mass lockdown as everybody´s bags were searched and nobody was allowed to leave the hostal for several hours. Not that that bothered us too much, since given the choice I'm not sure we would have been able to anyway! As it turned out, they broke open a locker in one of the rooms to find several plastic bags full of rubbish. That morning, a local guy had checked in with these as his ¨baggage¨, and clearly gone straight to his room, locked them in a locker, nicked everything in sight (my camara included) and buggered off. Suppose that´ll teach us for being so trusting with our stuff. Plus I continue my awe inspiring spree of losing my camera every time I so much as step out of the house. I´ll be contacting the Guiness Book of records soon, don´t worry.

So that pretty much does it for Cordoba, Argentina´s city that never sleeps, and that very much lives up to its reputation!

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