Cordoba!

I just got back from another weekend trip, this time to Cordoba. It's about 9 hours outside of Buenos Aires, the capital city of the province of Cordoba. I went with a pretty big group, a mix of people from my previous trips to Iguazu and Mendoza. I feel so lucky I've found such great people to travel with - everyone is a lot of fun and we spend most of our time laughing and having a great time together!

The first day we went to Oktoberfest, the annual beer festival. It's located 2 hours outside of Cordoba. We got onto a bus (after being on a bus for 9 hours!) in a big city... and two hours later we were in a small German village. I'm not kidding. It's a little bit of Germany in the middle of Argentina. I couldn't help but laugh when I first got there. Anyway, it was Oktoberfest-like... Lots of sausage, lots of beer, lots of folk dancing. Interestingly enough, the folk dancing wasn't all German, or traditional Argentine - it was from all different cultures that are represented in Argentina. There was even some really cool Arab-style dancing. It was a fun day, but I was happy we were only there for a day - I got bored after a while :-)

Sunday we went hiking in the beautiful Parque Condor. The busride there was one of the funniest parts of the trip - we were quite literally left off on the side of the road ,next to a sign for a park. It took us a while to find the actual entrance (everything else was fenced in!), but it was well worth it. We were in the Sierra mountains (I think!) and it was absolutely gorgeous - just rocks and long grass, all completely untouched. I don't think I've ever been somewhere that was so pristine - there was no development to be seen, the most "modern" thing was the Park Ranger's center. The variety of landscape is really incredible - going hiking there was so different from going hiking in Mendoza.

Monday the gods were against us. Half of our group left Sunday night and the other half decided to stay until Monday night, spending Monday seeing the sights of Cordoba. However, we somehow missed that EVERYTHING touristy in Cordoba is closed on Monday - the museums, the churches, etc. Even the museums that are usually open on Mondays were closed. Even the churches that are usually open on Mondays were closed - one of them actually had a sign that the nuns/priests had gone on a retreat that weekend! We ended up going to the Jesuit crypts, a really cool underground place. You walk down the street and all of a sudden there is a staircase in the middle of the street... and when you go down, you enter these old (empty!) crypts. Nobody knew about them for a while until they were found when construction workers were putting in cables or telephone lines. After that we walked around a bit, visited the Plaza, and relaxed. All in all a nice trip.

That's all for now. Lots of work this week and Bariloche next weekend!

Besos,
Becca

PS. For those of you keeping score, the Plaza was the Plaza San Martín. That means that I have been to... at least 3 San Martín streets, 2 San Martín Plazas, a San Martín national park, and seen countless statues of him. He's the liberator of South America, and he's REALLY loved!


and for some pictures....This reminded me a bit of the villlage from Shrek

How gorgeous!

Me taking a break from hiking.