San Luis to Cordoba

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After our city break in San Juan we went back on the desert road to drive down to San Luis via the Sierras de Quijadas national park. More rocks but different and less developed for tourism than Talampaya. We decided not to descend into the canyons to look for the dinosaur footprints but walked to various miradors and admired the views before going to San Luis.

This provincial capital doesn't get much of a write up in our guidebooks but it has some nice buildings and a helpful tourist office with good maps and guides to the city and province and as ever everyone is really friendly. After watching Hellboy in the hotel we wandered out for dinner at about 10.30pm and were still early, though the restaurant we were in had a queue by 11.30.

The clocks went back on Saturday night and we enjoyed a slight lie in before the long drive to our next destination, a posada north of Cordoba. The drive turned out to be rather different to what we expected. Somehow the provincial government has turned a meandering single lane road into a rather fast dual carriageway (toll) that speeds you to the edge of San Luis province without the guidebooks noticing. Anyway as soon as you get into Cordoba province the road goes back to normal. We took a cross country/mountain route to avoid the possible road closures - there was (and is) a protest by farmers about rising export taxes and to make their point quite a few of the major roads in the country have been closed by pickets with tractors, combine harvesters and in one case that we saw on the news with a farm made stinger type contraption. Anyway our route proved long and scenic but then we got a bit lost...some time later than expected and having asked several locals we found our way up 25km of dirt road to the posada.

Very nice place and a bit of a treat as we spent three quiet nights here doing a bit of walking and a final horse ride. The other guests were a mixed bunch including a german baron and his wife - they were at the end of a hunting trip, shooting about 400 birds a day. Not sure what to say to that.

We visited some of the nearby jesuit estancias on our way into Cordoba - before being diverted off the main roads by some friendly farmers who stopped us. Spent a hot afternoon and evening in Cordoba, some wandering, a film and dinner at Beto's (usual table) before getting the very late overnight bus to Buenos Aires. Chaos at the bus station with a combination of the effects of the strike and easter holidays. So much so that some so and so managed to pinch my camera out of my daybag - hence the lack of photos for this entry. I don't suppose a five year old camera with a flat battery and no charger (I have this) can be a great find but...never mind. Having got over being annoyed I slept really well.

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