I arrived in Argentina´s second city last Saturday at around noon, having made the brief forty kilometre bus ride over from Alta Gracia. Being the weekend there were markets aplenty and unluckily for me, the main one lead up a long and crowded street, all the way to my hostel. Weekend dithrerers are frustrating at the best of times but when you have no intention of shopping, the heat is in the mid thirties and you´re lugging around a fully laden military backpack, boy does the blood boil.
Fury aside I found my hostel with ease and after dumping my belongings and setting up with a room full of Irish travellers, I went for a recon mission around the centre. By the time I´d managed to get out the hostel it was siesta time and in Cordoba, they really do love to siesta. The only attractions that remained open were shopping malls and ice cream parlours so I headed for the former. There was not much to see but I did find the internet so I could discover which Cordoban football team was playing at home that weekend. The best on offer was a third division team and that immediately put to rest any plans of me seeing football in the city.
With little on offer, I cut short my sightseeing and returned to Baluch Backpackers where by early evening I´d had a couple of first stabs at the game of chess and was heading for possible catastrophe with drinking games on the roof terrace with a group of British and American guys. I managed to get off far lighter than some of the others and as 2PM arrived, our group departed for a nightclub on the city´s outskirts.
A fairly standard setup but for half of it being outdoors and by 5AM I and a couple of the Americans (Tad and Ruffin) headed for the exit and flagged a cab.
Sunday and I eventually made aquintance sometime after noon and as a cure for the nights exploits, went in search of Cordoba´s park in the south of the city. This was both uninspiring and uninteresting and after a brief break to write my diary and cool down, with my own sanity in mind, I performed a u-turn. Little consolation was found in seeing another former home of Che Guevara but you wouldn´t have known this unless you carried as much knowledge and literature as myself.
Finding food also proved difficult and the best I could conjure was a Big Mac.
Back at Baluch I chatted at length on the terrace with a Japanese girl who had been away from home for two years already and had no plans on returning any time soon. I followed this up by watching The Machinist starring Christian Bale and then it was onto more practise games of chess and finally more beers and poker where I once again was quite aggresive and paid the price.
More tired eyes were on display come Monday morning, only to be opened slightly wider by the appearance of a girl, who I found out over pastries, lived within a mile of me back in Didsbury. (I don´t mean to say there are pastries between where we live.)
Invigorated by this discovery and that of a Canadian girl in my room, myself, them and Alex from Seattle decided upon a walking tour of the city now things were open for the week. I picked up a bus ticket from the bus station, destination Rosario the following day and Alex did likewise. After a good half hour we landed at the Museum of Contemporary Art or something to that effect but being Cordoba, it was shut. As the conversation was good, it did little to dampen our spirits and our outing then consisted of more steps, pizza, beers and a visit to Argentina´s oldest cathedral.
I caught the end of Gladiator on our return to the hostel and post-credits, me and Alex went in pursuit of an evening meal. With most cafés shut with little explanation, the supermarket yelled at us, so we went inside and for £6 we managed to smuggle out half a kilo of steak, potato noisettes, peas and three litres of beer.
As three English boys had forgotten to polish off some of their steak and were leaving that night, they happily passed it on to us and we gleefully threw this half kilo in the pan along with ours. While we let technology take over, I shared a sweet maté with Alex which was consumed through his cow´s hoof gourd he´d bought earlier in the day. Forty minutes later, me, Alex and Norweigan Magnus were found destroying what we had in front of us and were soon full and brimming with pride.
Sarah from Didsbury then joined us at the dining table as did two bottles of Mendoza wine.
Tuesday landed along with a passing reunification with an Australian girl I´d met previously in Foz Do Iguacu. Time was not at hand so me and Alex said our goodbyes and got a taxi to the bus station. The six hours on the bus was relaxing and before we new it Argentina´s third city, Rosario, was cradling us.
A new city yes but different, not so much. Of the three cities I´ve passed through, including Posadas, all have virtually the same layout and naming structure. Generally, all the street names are the same and refer to important people, places and dates related to the country. In Rosario, as in Posadas, you´ll find Evra Peron, 3 de Febrero and 9 de Julio and in Cordoba, like here, you´ll find yourself walking down Bolivar, Entre Rios and 25 de Mayo. Likewise, all the cities seem to love a grid layout. Cordoba had the widest avenues whereas Rosario has smaller blocks and thus narrower roads. I hope you find it as fascinating as I find it annoying.
Having done some reading on the bus, we opted not to stay at Posada Juan Ignacio where I´d previously booked and isntead decided to try out La Casona Don Jaime. In the guidebook, this little venue promised a lot, with entertainment every night, ping-pong tournaments and a free welcome drink. In truth, it delivered very little and the the free Quilmes only came when I stressed this offer in my little book.
A South African couple recommended a buffet restaurant around the corner and we needed little time to consider this option for our evening meal. Nick from Australia tagged along and all three of us left content and barely able to walk.
On Wednesday morning I moved across to Juan Ignacio, purely on the basis that it had a pool.
According to the Lonely Planet guide, despite the city only having a bordering river, it does also have white sandy beaches. Inevitably me and Alex went in pursuit of this, especially with a blue sky hanging over us. On the way, we visited a huge memorial that we went up for some decent panoramic views and then tried to locate the bus outlined in the guide book. Here we were let down as we couldn´t find the elusive bus 153 and instead opted to take on the six kilometre journey to the beach on foot.
Walking along the river was fairly pleasant although the mirky brown water did raise questions as to what we would evevntually find. An hour and a half later we did find the sand but that´s all it was, as you couldn´t go in the water because it was unsafe.
An unexpected bonus was finding the football stadium of Rosario Central right behind the ´beach´although we couldn´t go inside as it was shut. The area around it was worth note however as everything from the pavements to lamp posts were painted in the clubs colours of blue and yellow.
Shattered and slightly underwhelmed, we caught the 153 back to town and went in search of more steak for tea. This in the end fell short of what we´d cooked up before but it still went down the same way and did it´s job.
Before sleep found us, we played cards and then Yatsy with a couple from Switzerland and a pair of friends from Holland.
Yesterday, I waved goodbye to Alex at the bus station and in return, he helped buy my next bus ticket with his far more developed Spanish. Before I travelled, I couldn´t have forseen spending more than five minutes with an American but this ´Jacob´s Crackers-dry´ young man dispelled some of my beliefs and our few days together enlightened me in many ways. His most notable contributions to my person were his teaching of chess and phrases I need to respond to at a grocery store.
With the tears dried, I caught a quick bus ride to the Che Guevara Plaza. Here in 2008 in his city of birth, a statue was erected and a plaza named in his honour. More significant than this is it´s location and timing of it´s unveiling. Very much on the outskirts of the city and created some thirty or so years after his death, the memorial in many ways reflects Argentina´s reluctance to embrace this global icon who to many did very little for the country in which he was born.
Political issues aside, the sculpture itself was cast from over seventy five thousand pieces of bronze, donated from people all over the world. Among these pieces are keys of houses abandoned by Argentines who fled the military dictatorship of the seventies.
From the plaza, I walked back through the centre and eventually returned to Juan Ignacio´s for a power nap and shower.
I joined up with the Dutch girls from the previous night, Peggy and Marjolijn, and set out to find a jazz festival that was on in the city for the whole month of November. We witnessed two events, neither of which could be described as anything close to ´jazz´.
The first was in a beautiful hall but this was juxtaposed with some very strange and out of sync dancing, performed by groups of students in tight black leggings and vests. They did also sing to some music being piped in but the visual horror show rendered this irrelevent.
After a pizza we were joined by a couple of Argentine cousins and with them we moved on to the next venue. This was in a bar and featured a girl swinging light sticks, a group of men talking on a terrace and a man portraying someone that seemed depressed and liked to thump tables. Very bizarre but as long as the beers were flowing, I was happy.
Eventually, we ditched the sleezy locals and went back to Don Jaime for some chats and a final beer.
Today has been very lazy with a three hour sleep in the afternoon and the only other notable activities being the purchase of an alarm clock and a pen. Skype has been hard to come by in this city and this was echoed in my hour long walk to find an internet cafe that had it.
Tomorrow, I catch the 8.15AM to San Antonio De Areco and the 70th annual Day of the Gaucho Festival. I´ll be there for five days of drinking, dancing, gaucho games and crafts.
Fingers crossed the festival beats walking round in squares.
Also on Saturday is Auntie Joan´s 70th birthday but with my Gaucho Hostel reservation already made, I will regeretably be unable to attend. I send my love to everyone who can make it.
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