What do a Guerrilla and Jesuits have in common?

Monday 27 February 2012

We left Cordoba today and headed south. We realised last night that today is a public holiday. What for I don’t know, but they had a four day weekend just gone for Carnivale. At least that meant the town roads were quite, but on the downside it could mean that there is no petrol and that every tourist road travels at a snail’s pace. For some reason on the weekend and public holidays many petrol station have no petrol, but they have diesel and gas. So we always fill up when we can. We were on tourist roads for the first half of the day, gosh it was slow.

Alta Gracia was our first stop. This is where Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara grew up, it also has a Jesuit Estancia that is UNESCO heritage listed. The first stop was the Estancia as that was on the main square and the first one we found. Its formal name is Museo de la Estancia Jesuitica de Alta Gracia and Casa del Virrey Liniers. It has had an esteemed past and has been restored beautifully. In 1643 the landowner donated the land and his worldly goods to the Jesuits. The Jesuits developed the land and area, particularly in cattle, but also built flour mills, furnaces for making tiles and brick, and textiles. They were very successful as in Santa Cantalina. However the Jesuit’s expulsion from Argentina in1767 put an end to it all. After a number of different owners, in 1868 the last owner final wish was for it to be divided into the city of Alta Gracia.

The Estancia achieved UNESCO world heritage status in 2000, and you could access much more of it than Santa Cantolina. It really is quite beautiful.

Next stop was the house that Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara grew up in. His family moved to Alta Gracia in 1935 due to his asthma, they moved to Cordoba in 1943. Alta Gracia’s local government purchased the house in November 2000 and declared a Historical Heritage site and the museum developed. The Museum relates all of Cuba and Castro and finally the Congo and Bolivia. They have a room dedicated to the visit in July 2006 but Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. It is a fascinating collection and we really enjoyed it. It tended to miss some of the more brutal parts of his dealing in Cuba after liberation. Wikipedia has a very good entry on him. There is also a gift shop there where you can purchase a large variety of items with the iconic image of Che. I wonder if he would approve of that. Also as a foreigner it was 75 pesos to enter instead of 15pesos. Hmmm. Despite that we really enjoyed it.

Our next stop was Villa General Belgrano, about 30km south of Alta Gracia. This is where the survivors of the WWII German battleship Graf Spee ended up, after it sank near Montevideo. There are no Germans here anymore, nor is any German spoken, but they have lots of shops etc using varying german related names. However since it was public holiday Monday, nothing was open, so we left.

Now we had about 400km to go to our accommodation in Potrero de los Funes, abut 15km north of San Luis. We thought it might be nice to stay out of the city and some where a little bit in the country side. Booking.com only listed this place and one other place here. It all sounded nice. But first we have some driving to do.

We got to Potrero de los Funes around 6.30pm. It wasn’t quite what we expected. I was driving at this stage. I got a real shock when we were about 1km from the hotel and the road turned into a very wide car racing track.

The Albatross will write a few words on that tomorrow.

Lazy Day

Sunday 26 February 2012

Alright, our last day in Cordoba. It’s Sunday so there is almost nothing open until 14:00, and then only a restaurant or too. This is ok as the streets are quiet and we’ve worked it out and planned (sort of) for it. So after a small late breaky we hit the streets and wandered around in relative quiet and thankfully overcast, conditions as yesterday was sunny and baking hot. Cordoba is rather lovely, with old buildings and big clean plazas (exceptionally clean for Argie). Being Sunday, overcast and cool it was quiet and lovely just to walk.

After a coffee we hit the Paseo del Buen Pastor which is full of student art, good sculptures and a few restaurants.

It’s also opposite a lovely cathedral, Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, which is one of the few neo Gothic churches in Argentina, and very pretty. Fortunately we arrived just as mass was finishing, so we could nip inside before they shut it for the week (enough god for you!).

Lunch was across the road back in the museum with pretty views of the church. A slow stagger home for strategic planning for the next week and beyond.

Now there are times when Google Translate fails (which is why we always convert it and then convert it back to check). In this case, we were having a chat with our landlord (we’re in an apartment) and had this as a sign off.

“Greetings and good riddance!”, which we chuckled at. After some playing, it turns out he was trying to say “Regards and safe travels”, but got a tad bastardised.

Off to the home of Che Guevara, some black forest cake and a dip in a nice lake tomorrow.

A giant red ring

Saturday 25 February 2012

Today we thought we’d check out some museum and the Nueva Cordoba and Guemes suburbs of the inner city. Our first stop was Guemes to see the antique and artisan shops. We were a bit early (at 11am) for the main big weekend ‘feria artisanal’ (hippy market selling stuff), must open at 5pm or some other ridiculous time. We walked past the canal that runs up the side of the city area. This is a very pretty area with canal, walls, pavements and bridges built out of stone and lined with Jacarandas.

From here we walked over to Nueve Cordoba to the Palacio Ferreyra/Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita (Fine Arts Museum). It is set in a stunning building that was built in 1914. The collection is ok, the building amazing.

Next stop was the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa (Fine Arts Museum). This one is in a funky building set on many different levels and sections. The best bit was the giant inflatable bat, pig and three telephones.

A long stop for lunch at the local schnitzel place. They had a list of 25 different toppings for your schnitzel, a choice of beef, chicken or fish and then our choice of how you wanted you potatoes cooked. We chose the one that had no cheese on it, it did have pancetta though. My chicken schnitzel was bigger than my head. The Albatross helped me finish it.

We walked across to the Paseo del Bicentenario (Bicentennial Walk), celebrating 200 years of independence from Spain in 2010.It was a huge range of rings erected in the park, each one for each year of the bicentenary.

Funky monks and UFOs

Friday 24February 2012

Alright, today we turned the sport sedan north and hit the rockin’ town of Santa Cantalina. It is an old Jesuit Monastery which was at full tilt just before Spain got a tad concern about how popular they were and booted the Jesuits out in the 1767’s. Now it is lovely and UNESCO heritage listed, but the only spot we could actually enter was the church.

So whilst the web site showed magnificent things, we couldn’t look at them. A tad rough for an hour’s drive and 15km of dirt road for 30 minutes. No worries, we wanted to go to UFO centre on South America, Cappilla del Monte. Unfortunately what looked like a 20km nip over turned into a 39km, 1.5 hour hell drive on some rubbish roads over the Sierra Chico’s. Really, really bad roads, but some pretty scenes if you can look up for a second.

UFO town eventually arrived, we were way too late for the seven hour walk up to Cero Uritorco, we settled for a coffee and a stop at Ovinis (UFO’s) research central. Best $5 ever spent. See the photos for yourselves, or visit the web site http://ciouritorco.org/ . I suggest you do, it’s more impressive than their famous H.Q.

We were about to skip town, but thought we should stop and take a photo of the hills. There was a fast streak, Tuna was taking a snap at the time and we think we got it, we looked at the photos there was something. Trust me there was no bird or anything in the sky at the time. We’re freaked.

WE BELIEVE!

Road home was busy and horrible. Town was ok till we hit the six lane roundabout. Must never ever go that way again, still shaking.

Cordoba, pretty city

Thursday 22 February 2012

A long, nice nap and The Albatross cracked the tube of Vegemite to have on toast for breakfast.

Then we tried to get out of the apartment. Initially it was thought that Tuna was incompetent in using a key to unlock the door. I was trying to unlock the door to let the cleaning lady in. (I think the cleaning lady is actually the owners mother.) Then The Albatross tried to unlock the door, he was found to be incompetent too. Eventually we got it open and through bad Spanish and gestures indicated that we had trouble with the lock. Not believing us, she showed us how it worked. Then she shut the door and showed us how it worked. Ha! Locked in! She tried lots of times and it didn’t work. Eventually she rang the owner and said something. She kept on trying to get the door open and someone walked outside and she pushed the key under the door. After about 20 minutes (and not so quiet giggling by us) the door opened. The maintenance men turned up, three of them, they played with the door and smoked fags, we got a new set of keys.

All good. Pack up the laundry and out we go, headed off towards Plaza San Martin. Fancy that, a central square dedicated to the man himself. Very pretty.

We had a couple of museums and art galleries that we wanted to go to. We just wandered around the centro area. There are lots of lovely old building.

Cordoba was founded in 1573 by a skinning looking bloke in puffy pants.

We went to the Museo de la Memoria. This museum is set in the building where the ‘special police’ (D2) detained and tortured many people in the starting in the mid 1970’s. They have kept the building essentially how it was then. It looks like it took over multiple buildings and then they just punched a new doorway through. It is a chilling place, there are thousands of people that are still unaccounted for from this time, ending 30 years ago. They have a variety of room that are dedicated to the missing people, some of them have booklets that are decorated and dedicated to specific people. It is a reminder of what has happened so recently.

We also visited the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes dr Genaro Peres (Fine Arts Museum). The building is a beautiful 19th century design and houses an ok selection of paintings (we discussed where we’d pop the kitchen).

We also visited the Cripta Jesuitica which the Jesuits built in the 18th century, only to be sent packing shortly after completion. They essentially knocked it down when they were widening the major street Av Colon in the early 1800’s. In 1989 when they were laying new phone cable, they found it again. This was at the right time and the city excavated and preserved it.

We just kept wandering and saw so much stunning architecture and sights. We visited the North Markets (like Central Markets in Adelaide) where there are fruit and vegie stalls along with meat shops selling a variety of cuts of meat.

There were some small place selling cooked food, we stopped for some fantastic empanadas and a beer.

Lovely day.