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Published: January 8th 2005
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Me, with a historic church
There´s a pigeon in every hole! That´s a lot of pigeon poop... We decided to go to Córdoba because you could fly direct from there to Iguazú - and it was also in that general direction.
Other reasons were:
- We didn´t want to go back via Buenos Aires - seemed a bit silly for some reason
- The bus journey was about 23 hours from Mendoza to Córdoba
- The flight was only 300pesos, and if we went to Córdoba we would see an extra place too
- Córdoba had a fierce reputation for being a better party city than BA and we didn´t get to party properly in BA
So, the plan was laid after a bit of research and we arrived by bus to Córdoba early in the morning, and took a taxi to our pre-booked hostel. Unfortunately there had been some jiggery-pokery with the booking (I´m not going to go into the reasons... but it wasn´t my fault) and our "confirmed" double room had been double-booked. I thought I aksed for a room with double bed, not double booking?
Aaaaaaanyway, the issue was sorted out over breakfast and a cup of tea (great way to chill out a tired English/Irish combo, Argies) and we settled for
beds in the dorms - we were only staying there one night anyway.
After showering and a bit of a go on the old Atari 8-bit they had in the hostal (It is a retro, art-deco, studenty-type place called "Locomotion Pop" after all) we went for a potter around town and ended up taking the only pictures we have of Córdoba - it´s Argentina´s second city with lots of churches and Jesuit influences, and a large student population during term-time.
We also had a look in one of the main tourist attractions, the Crypto (Crypt, surprisingly enough) which is an old Jesuit underground crypt that was found a few years ago when they were re-doing one of the main streets. It´s a bit like a wine cellar really, and definitely worth 20 minutes of your time to look around and have a woman explain in rapid Spanish what everything is, even though it´s pretty obvious.
Later that afternoon I headed off with Enzo (one of the two guys running the hostal), and some French bloke to spend a few hours at a the beach. Being several hundred miles inland, I questioned him on the length of the bus
Pigeon families in their little houses
I wonder if they realise that humans made it for them and they should be grateful and not poop on us? journey to get to this beach - to be told that it was a sandy beach, on a river and that it was a really great scene. And so it was - a proper sandy beach on a narrow, clean river with hundreds of people drinking, enjoying the music coming from the two wooden-construct bars (good sound systems alright), playing volleyball and generally mucking around in the river.
I had a couple of beers and then went for a swim and chatted to some Israeli guys who looked a bit frightened by it all (a bit unusual for them, all that water), and we patted a volleyball around (badly) with the kids of this guy there. Later on I decided that our table was a bit boring (everyone was really quiet) and went to seek fun in the form of trying to interact with some extremely drunk Argentinian guys.
It went very well really, although the conversations weren´t particularly in-depth, covering a range of topics from the Maradonna "hand of God" goal, to nothing else apart from some chanting of "Peter, Peter, Peter" but I can´t remember what I did to bring that on. I also did a bit of
practice with this massive rugby player-type and successfully avoided one of his tackles whilst scoring a "try" behind him. I think my celebrations and the jeers of his colleagues brought on a certain amount of the "i´m gonna get him" factor and the second time I tried to get past him wasn´t so lucky. It didn´t hurt at all though, like I expected Rugby to. I also attempted to tackle him, and managed to bring him down albeit about 10 yards after initially wrapping my arms around his legs - I think he probably would have scored that try.
Oh well, 1 out of 3 isn´t bad and I successfully resisted the urge to mention the old conflict of ´82 in response to the Maradonna mockings. Probably a good thing for my health.
All in all, it was really great fun, and I think these people are really fortunate to have such a beautiful country - I think they realise it to, which is nice.
Later on I went for some drinks with a couple of Dutch guys and an American fella, and ended up chatting to the Yank - we decided to talk about politics and I have
now decided it should not be a taboo subject anywhere. He was quite worried about his country´s current reputation but I reminded him of some of the great things his country has done and it´s just going through and teeny-weeny leadership crisis right now and not to worry too much - everyone will love America again as soon as they make Bigmacs big again.
That´s it really, the next day we got up, got our stuff together, and headed to the airport.... next stop, Iguazú
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