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Published: January 6th 2012
Day 82 Sunday 1
st January
Have you seen the movie “28 Days Later” or any Zombie movie, well this is what the streets of Cordoba were like, no one, no cars, no people, and for that matter no dogs, nada, just us. It was like the people in our hotel went to sleep last night and everyone else disappeared and we were expecting the zombies to appear at any moment. We started the day normally, having breakfast and because it was New Year’s Day we just knew that nothing would be open so we sort of planned on just hanging around in the room. We didn’t think we would be getting our room cleaned but at 10.30 three women came around and kicked us out of the room so they could clean it. We took the opportunity to check out if anything was open and that is when we realised we had slipped into an “end of the world” or “zombieland” scenario. It was very surreal and even more so that it was now 2012 and we are in South America. We circled around town for nearly an hour till we figured our room would
be clean and that we weren’t going to see anything other than the piles of spent fireworks and assorted debris.
When we got back to the hotel we spent the day taking it easy, sorting out our blog and reading. Discovered on a website for the Buenos Aires Herald that 140 people were injured last night due to the fireworks, most were kids and the predominate injury was to the eyes. Over 30 of the injuries were from Cordoba alone, which did not surprise us at all after seeing the volume of fireworks that were on display last night.
At night we headed out to see if we could get a bite to eat and discovered a few cafés open and stopped at one a couple of blocks from the hotel where we got a “Lomito completo” each. This is basically a steak on a roll with salad, ham, egg and of course cheese. This is a standard on just about every Argentinian menu and is generally huge, but the quality varies. Tonight’s wasn’t very good but it filled a hole and we waddled home about 11.
Day 83 Monday 2
nd January
Over breakfast today down on the ground floor of the Hotel we had front row seats of the police in town booking motorcyclists. They had set themselves right out the front and stopped every motorcyclist that went past and was booking them for not wearing a helmet, and what looked like for having an unregistered bike. In each case the person was given a fine and the bike was hauled on to the back of a truck. In the time we had breakfast they had bagged 11 bikes, which isn’t a bad haul. The truck could only take 11 bikes so it left and by the time we got up to our room we could see out our window that another truck had turned up and they were starting to load it.
We had planned on doing another bus trip out to a nearby Jesuit town today but we soon discovered that the old Jesuit sites are closed on Mondays. The varying opening times of museums and historic sites can be a frustrating thing when travelling, and so far South America has been a shocker. Sunday and Mondays are generally the close days, but the midday siesta is
what is doing our head in. We are also finding so many places aren’t open when they should be and all this is now compounded by the Christmas New Year break. We came close to just heading out to the town of Jesus Maria anyway but it was an hour out of town and we figured we would probably get there and find nothing open, so opted to just have another rest day.
We headed up to the roof terrace where we had contemplated going for a swim in the hotel pool but the water was such a vivid green colour that I just didn’t want to go near it. It looked like it hadn’t seen an ounce of chlorine in a decade and I half expected to see the monster from the black lagoon to emerge from the water. We had seen plenty of people swimming in it but we just didn’t want to take the chance and so spent the morning sitting around and reading. Retreated to our room in the early afternoon when the heat got too much for us and continued our reading.
At around 7 we headed out to a café for a
couple of beers and found a nice place in a small plaza in front of one of the old Jesuit churches. It was a great spot except we were attacked by the demented pigeons from hell. The damn birds actually kept landing on our table in front of us trying to eat our small bowl of peanuts. After one of them landed in the bowl Shelley got fed up with them and moved it to an empty table where they cleared out the peanuts in 2 seconds flat. After seeing this feeding frenzy over peanuts we thought it would be wise to get our dinner elsewhere and so moved on to the Mandarina restaurant, which we had gone to a few days back. Once again the feed was great and we were able to get home early (10.30) so we could pack our bags for our journey to Rosario tomorrow.
Day 84 Tuesday 3
rd January
Up early for the first time in ages, got our breakfast, finished our packing and was down at the foyer by 8.45 for our check out. As the taxi took us to the bus terminal we both felt
really sad about leaving Cordoba. We had been here for a week now, and we had really enjoyed our stay. The town hasn’t got a lot to see or do but had a great vibe and some really interesting districts. It also feels as if it is in the process of developing some real character and would be great to return in a few years to see what the place is like.
As always we turned up at the bus terminal early, (a habit I would prefer than turning up late), and we had to sit around for nearly an hour. At about 9.45 our bus appeared which was with Sierra Del Cordoba, a company we haven’t ever used before. I remember reading that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on a beach, and I reckon the same analogy can be applied to Argentinian bus companies. The bus ended up being a good one, with the best leg room yet and the temperature set just about right. But as with other recent bus trips we didn’t get any food, and the bus stopped at every tin pot town it passed. Poor Shelley got a
bit of motion sickness on the journey and tried her best impression of sleeping while I whittled the hours away doing Suduku puzzles. The terrain was just flat endless fields of what looked like corn crops and reminded me a lot like country Victoria. We had been recently told that a lot of Argentina that was once cattle country is now being transformed into crops of corn and soy to satisfy the global need for fuel crops, and from what we saw today it might be true.
We finally got to Rosario around 4.30pm and managed to extract our bags out of the bus and then us out of the terminal. We had once again pre booked our hotel on booking.com and had chosen a Hotel near the centre of town, which made it a long taxi drive from the bus terminal, but our driver was good and seemed to take us directly there rather than the usual round about way. We are staying at the hotel Sol del Plaza and managed to snag a large room on the 10
th floor with balcony for $70 AUS a night. We have been very lazy lately by pre booking our rooms
rather than finding something when we turn up but this is the peak season and we want to make sure we have a bed for the night. We have also been paying a bit more for our rooms than planned as $50 a night was the planned maximum but this room was discounted 40 per cent because we are staying a few nights so we couldn’t resist.
As per our usual custom we dropped our bags in the room and hit the streets to see what was around. The hotel is across from a central plaza that leads onto the town malls so we had a look around the shops and then checked out our food options, which looked a little grim. As I might have stated before, Argentina is renowned for its “Parrilla’s” which are barbeque meat restaurants, and if you find a good one, they are sensational. Unfortunately they are disappearing fast and being replaced by pizza and pasta places. After walking around town for ages we couldn’t find a single parrilla and instead got a feed from a café on the side of the plaza across from the hotel. The staff were extra friendly and we were able to get a simple grilled chicken with salad and chips, which made a great change from things smothered in a lake of cheese.
Day 85 Wednesday 4
th January
First day in town and we had things to organise, so straight after breakfast we went off to find a laundry, so we don’t become stinky backpackers. Our hotel like most we have stayed at will do your laundry for you but are so expensive that we always get out and put our clothes into a laundry ourselves. A hotel will charge about $25AUS a load while a laundry will do it for about $5 to 6AUS so it is worth finding one. We luckily found one just around the corner from the hotel so we planned on dropping a full load off tomorrow morning.
Next on the agenda was to looking into doing some kayaking. Rosario is situated on a river and one of the main reasons for coming here was the opportunity to do some kayaking, which so far on this trip has eluded us. The lonely planet had a recommendation for a guy running bike and kayaking tours and his website had a bit more info about the tours but we wanted to go to his shop and find out some more details. His shop was about 1.5 kilometres, so off we went to find it and thankfully it was a lovely morning and it gave us the chance to check out more of the town. We found his shop, which in fact was just an apartment in a block of flats and after buzzing, the guy’s mother came down and because she couldn’t speak English, she rang her son on her mobile. I tried my best to have a conversation with the guy who was at that point paddling on the river but the line wasn’t very good and it all got way too hard. I couldn’t even work out where we had to meet him, and I wasn’t happy with just handing over money to his mother so once again kayaking has eluded us.
With this failure we decided to head down to the river and see what other options we might find. Along the way we headed once more through the downtown malls and then led onto the huge stone memorial to the designer of the Argentinian flag Manuel Belgrano. The Lonely Planet superbly describes it as “a chillingly nationalistic construction in pitiless stone”. It is an amazing piece of work, and it is beautiful but it also wouldn’t look out of place in Albert Speers vision of Berlin. Along with an eternal flame, water features and art deco statues was a huge tower which we could have got a lift to the top for views over the city….except it was closed for siesta.
We had chosen Rosario as a stop off point on the way back to Buenos Aires as a break in our travels and because we had read how it was situated on the water, had lovely beaches and there were opportunities for kayaking and cruises. What we didn’t stop to think was that the water isn’t the ocean but rather a river that flows down from Paraguay. It wasn’t till we got to the bank of the muddy coloured river that the realisation sank in. It didn’t smell and we couldn’t see anything floating in the water, so it might be okay to go for a dip in but I thought of all those towns upstream from this point and just didn’t want to take the chance. We found the small town docks from where the tourist boats leave from and there was a huge line up to get the boats across the river to the nearby island that has sandy beaches. Everyone was wearing their swimmers and carrying eskies ready for a day on the beach. I know there is nothing wrong with swimming in a river, and we are just spoilt living in Sydney where we have lovely ocean beaches, but this is a long river running through lots of towns and to emphasize my fears a large oil tanker cruised down the river past us, so god only knows what pollutants there may be. While trying to get my head around swimming in the mud, we discovered that the tourist boats that cruise around the river islands aren’t running till Saturday, so we now had ruled out, kayaking, swimming and the boat cruise.
We then decided to go for a walk along the shoreline to see what else there was to see and do. The entire 15km river front of Rosario has been renewed from wharves and industry to parkland and walking trails. Some of the old warehouses are still in the process of being renovated while others have been turned into trendy bars and restaurants. It was by this time early afternoon and the temperature was hitting close to 35 degrees so it would have been perfect to stop and have a beer in the shade but due to my long struggle with gout I have decided to give up the booze for a few days to see if I can settle it down and so I had to add “drinking” to my things I couldn’t do in town. After staring longingly at the cold beer on offer we made tracks back to our hotel where we thought we would go for a swim in the pool. When we got back there we discovered that the water was such a filthy shade of green that they were in the process of draining it; today wasn’t a good day for doing things.
Spent the late afternoon back in our room reading, and we would have loved to have sat on our balcony but we only had one chair so instead we were sitting on the bed. It was at this point that I noticed that our bedside lamps could be swivelled into different positions for better light. I was just moving mine around when BANG, and sparks shot out at me just before we lost all power. I wasn’t sure if I had blown the power in the whole hotel, or just our room so I went down to reception to see if they could fix it, and there once again I had to do my best pantomime for him to make him understand that we had no power. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look so confused before, but he got the picture and sent some one up to fix our fuse. When I thought about it later I was probably lucky I didn’t electrocute myself. After that brush with death we once again went out in search of a decent feed. The Lonely Planet recommended two restaurants on the other side of town, one was a parrilla and the other was vegetarian. Before leaving I actually said to Shelley “they are close to each other and I am sure if one isn’t open the other will be”….wrong. One was closed and the other didn’t even look like it existed. The address of 1170 Santa Fe Street is actually an old car park, so this would be about the third time that the Lonely Planet has got an address wrong. Wandered around seeing if we could find it without any luck but came across some more great looking bars that seemed to only make my self imposed sobriety even harder. We eventually made it back to the café we were at last night and got another good feed, which was probably the only thing that went right for us today.
Day 86 Thursday 5
th January
So much that we had planned for this town isn’t going to be happening so there was no reason to be jumping out of bed early but we were down at the breakfast table by 8.30. Got our laundry together and dropped it off before going onto a travel agent to get our tickets out of town. Booking hotels on booking.com is great because it saves us trudging around trying to find one when we arrive, the downside is that if we hadn’t booked this room till Sunday we may have skipped town today but now we are stuck here. We picked up our tickets from a lovely lady who proved once again that despite only knowing a little Spanish we can still communicate what we want.
There really wasn’t much else to do today other than have a good look through the shops so we headed into the malls and started looking. After about half an hour I was getting bored and tired and I think bugging Shelley who wanted to spend more time looking for a dress so I headed back to the hotel and left her with it. This was the first time in 86 days that we have left each other side so it kind of felt weird walking back to the hotel without her. In the end the lack of choice and the heat had her back at the hotel within the hour. Checked on the pool which was now in the process of being filled after being cleaned so swimming was still off the agenda, so instead we once again sat back and read. This is turning out to be a strange trip for us as we have never had so much down time on our hands before. Sort of figured this was going to be a difficult time of the year with lots of things closed but it has been made all the worse for staying in fairly dull towns.
In the late afternoon we went looking for dinner and tonight for a change we headed south of town to an area that is supposed to be filled with lots of local eateries. Only took us 30 minutes to walk down to Perregrini Street where we found heaps of restaurant/bars lining both sides of the busy thoroughfare. After walking up and down both sides we discovered that all had pretty much the same menus and prices. Some claimed to be Parrillas, but unless you can see the meat being barbequed you have good reason to be sceptical of the methods and quality. We were both feeling a little disappointed in the town and food choices so we soon found ourselves having a beer in a bar. Shelley has been craving a good salad but we just can’t seem to find them. The bar menu had a selection of salads on the menu and all consisted of 3 ingredients plus ham and cheese, it was as if there was no way of escaping bloody ham and cheese. The funniest salad was the “tropical salad” which had lettuce, tomato, carrot, cheese and ham. All these years we had been under the illusion that pineapples and coconuts were tropical when in fact it is carrots! We later moved onto another restaurant where we ordered a pizza (the first for a while) in the hope it was going to be good. Despite the promise of plenty of toppings we basically got a lake of cheese with some slices of salami. It was okay and eatable although the stray dog Shelley tried to feed didn’t think so. The poor scrappy old dog tried to eat pieces of the pizza and then spat it out and looked at us if to say “got anything else other than cheese?” You have to worry when even the town strays won’t eat it. So Shelley just gave it some cuddles and apologised for not having steak.
The only good thing about eating at such joints is that it is cheap. We got a large pizza and two 1 litre bottles of beer for 80 Pesos ($20), the downside of course is that it is bland and cheesy.
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Margaret Darlington
non-member comment
:WOW:
Loving reading yur exploits. Shelly you shall get a dress ha ha. Just to let you know Keith is in hospital and having a pace maker fitted. still he thinks he will make Bali on the 14th. Karlie got married on Sunday life busy here (what's new????) me xx