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Day 63 - Monday 10.25.2010
CHE BOLUDO, CHE PRE-BARBUDO
(Córdoba, Argentina, to nearby Alta Gracia and back)

Note to self: oatmeal made with whole milk and fruit is a good breakfast.

We take the bus an hour away to Alta Gracia, once a mountain-natury resort, now a mountain-natury suburb of Córdoba. Big claim to fame: Ernesto ¨Che¨Guevara, who brought you such revolutions as Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia, lived here from the age of 4 or 8 or something to the age of 16 or 18 or 22 or something. Che: the Early Years. You all know he had asthma. His folks moved here from the congested port city of Rosario (boo) to the minty-fresh mountain spring air of Alta Gracia (yay) so that the asthmatic little aspiring goverment-toppler could breathe freely. The house is converted into a nice little museum(shrine), with lots of family memorabilia(relics) and photos(icons) and original letters(scripture) and journals(sermons) and the like(teachings, miracles, turning dictatorships into wine). A little heavy on the imagery, a little short on the info. Our two favorite parts: the room devoted entirely to photos of the 2006 visit to the house museum by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and the video photo-montage of Che`s childhood photos that was essentially a last-night-at-summer camp slideshow, but for the addition of that hope-you-had-the-time-of-your-life Green Day song.

Lest we forget that this blog owes its sub-name to little Ernesto... While the actual motorcycle Che rode around South America is not on display, an exact replica of the famous motorcycle is. For one shining moment, standing in Che`s former bedroom, looking at a sister of the famous chopper itself, we can all feel like we too have a motorcycle diary.

Alta Gracia is also home to an incredibly awesome adventure park, where the playground equipment is all made of tree stumps, and a grotto of a Virgin of Lourdes, named such for its resemblance to the site in the actual Lourdes in France where the actual miracle happened to the actual virgin. Some beautiful walks through forests, some nice streams. Joseph also thought he saw a giraffe, but it turned out to be a horse with its head in the air. Mockery ensued. Then they went back to Córdoba.

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Day 62 - Sunday 10.24.2010
ARTSY FARTSY
(Córdoba, Argentina)

So Córdoba is pretty cool. We get ourselves some beds at a welcoming hostal (smelly French people in smelly dorm rooms) with a nice patio, a nice dog, a nice kitchen, and pretty nice people. We make some friends. We get ourselves some coffee. The city is pretty big but quite welcoming, quite walkable, quite friendly. Beautiful architecture, ranging from old Jesuit buildings and large colonial city squares to horrific 1970s constructions to Parisian tree-lined boulevards. The city has a pretty big university scene, so it`s known for being lively.

We visit the Museo de Bellas Artes -- highly recommended. Old classical style building with an ultra-modern interior, showcasing an array of regional art. Impressionist art and colonial portraits up to modern photography expositions and university student art competitions. Some good, some bad, all worthy of our time.

In the evening time we find out about a free concert at Paseo del Buen Pastor, an outdoor concert space with a big fountain and lots of people with thermoses and mate. The band, Los Cocineros, quite frankly, rocks. An eclectic mix of ska and Argentine rock and Italian and Balkan brass and cumbia and [insert-other-eclectic-music-forms-here]. With some new friends from the hostel, including most of the staff of the hostel, we bring back a pizza (sucks) and sit around until too late.

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Day 61 - Saturday 10.23.2010
ANYTHING TO DECLARE? YEAH, DON´T GO TO TUCUMAN
(Tafi del Valle, Argentina to Tucuman, Argentina to bus...)

Travel day... to get to Córdoba from Tafi del Valle, one must go through Túcuman. We decide to spend the day in Túcuman, and then take an overnight bus to Córdoba. [side note: Joseph has now figured out how to use the accent mark key.]

Verdict on Túcuman: blegh. A bit grimy. But as any rider on linea D of the Buenos Aires subway can tell you, there was a famous Congreso de Túcuman. Said congress of Túcuman was one of the meetings in which Argentina declared its independence from Spain (yes, there seems to have been more than one...). Our visit to the Casa de la Independencia is quite enjoyable, and we learn quite a bit from our young and entertaining tour guide about the political and military situation of the early 1800s in Argentina. Most interesting among the items learned from our young and entertaining tour guide, at the conclusion of the tour, was the fact that ours had in fact been a private tour, and that we had inadvertently invited ourselves to join. That explains why everyone else was 75 years old and retired. Ah well.

Back to bus station, get on night bus, wish seats were bigger.

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Day 60 - Friday 10.22.2010
FEEL LIKE IT´S RAINING ALL OVER THE WORLD
(Cafayate, Argentina to Tafi del Valle, Argentina)

In a surprising and uncharacteristically non-lazy move, Victoria and Joseph rise before the sun to get thee to a 6am bus out of town. Between patches of time spent dozing and intermittently eating cookies, they catch glimpes of small towns in the Argentinian north wake up for the day... small town squares, old train stations, the occasional estancia. Quite beautiful scenery. The bus heads up over a range of mountains to the east and into a cloud...

... where they remain for the next 24 hours. In said cloud. Tafi del Valle, situated high on a ridge of mountains, would surely have a beautiful view of the nearby valle (valley) were it not stuck in the middle of a rain cloud.

Going off a random tip from a fellow obviously-not-from-around-here traveller at the bus station, Victoria and Joseph locate one Señora Alma and procure a quaint mini-apartment, complete with an electric-kettle style shower and a mini-kitchen. The details of the rest of the day are somewhat inconsequential, but revolve mostly around the eventual purchase of a mate gourd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage)) and the elaboration of a risotto with tomato and wine.