Cordoba : 4 days in Argentina’s second largest city

Unsuccessful stop in San Luis

We leave Mendoza, full of energy, to go to San Luis, 4 hours away. The goal is to visit the Sierra de las Quijadas the next day. This national park is located at 1h30 drive from San Luis, not well known from tourists, it looks absolutely beautiful. The dry mountains and landscapes look a little like the Bryce Canyon. The park is also home to many fossiles.

After doing some research online, it seemed that we could catch a bus going from San Luis to San Juan and stop on the way at the entrance of the park. But apparently that isn’t true anymore. Indeed, when we arrive in the San Luis bus terminal, we try to buy tickets to go to the park entrance the next day, but the cashier tells us that the bus to San Juan doesn’t stop at the park entrance anymore. Why? No one seems to know… So we try to see how much it would cost to rent a car for the day, but it is way too much. We even tried negotiating with a remis (basically a local taxi), but again the price was not worth it at all. The entrance is 60 miles away so we knew taking a cab would have been a stretch. Finally, we contemplate the idea of hoping in the bus to San Juan and directly ask our driver to drop us off at the park entrance. That would probably not have been a problem, but the tricky part would be coming back to San Luis. We could have hitchhiked back but being in the low season we were afraid we wouldn’t run into anybody. So we decided not to go and it is a shame when you see what the park looks like bellow.

Too bad, we will use our day in San Luis to work on the end of our itinerary in South America. So the day isn’t totally lost !

We forget about San Luis and go to Cordoba

The next day, we go to Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina, after Buenos Aires. It is an 8 hour bus ride from San Luis, but it will take a little longer because of a strike. A small group of men from the transportation union was protesting and blocked our bus for 30 minutes outside the bus terminal of Rio Cuarto.

When we arrive in Cordoba, it is very hot and humid. The sky is grey and we can feel a thunderstorm coming. We walk to our Airbnb, a private room in a huge apartment with 3 Argentinian roommates. We even have our private bathroom! We get to meet our roommates, and they are awesome.

Visit of Alta Gracia

For our first full day in Cordoba, it is raining. So we decide to go to Alta Gracia, a little town 45 minutes away, to visit an estancia and a museum about Che Guevara.

Museo National Estancia Jesuitica de Alta Gracia

At the time of the Jesuits, the region had 6 estancias. These estancias were basically big farms. Only 4 are left today, including the one in Alta Gracia, that became a museum.

The museum explains life at the time with different objects from the time and techniques used to forge metal for example.

Of course, there is a church attached to it, which is very cute.

Museo Casa del “Che” Guevara

In Alta Gracia, we can also find the house where Che Guevara grew up.

Indeed, even if born in Rosario, the Che’s parents decided to move to Alta Gracia. The Che suffered from asthma, and the air in Alta Gracia is known to be dry and clean, perfect for the little boy. Today, the house is home to a museum going over the life of the Che. The visit was really interesting and we realized we didn’t know much about him (aside from his face printed on tee shirts). For example, he graduated to become a doctor, and did multiple road trips across South America on his motorbike.

Visit of the Sarmiento park, student square and the Güemes neighborhood

Late afternoon, we finish the day with a free walking tour of the students neighborhood, as well as the big Sarmiento park and the bohemian neighborhood Güemes.

In the Sarmiento park we can find 200 circles, that look a little like the Olympic rings. These 200 rings were built to celebrate 200 years of independence from the Spanish. Each ring in the Paseo del Bicentenario represents a year from 1810 to 2010. Also, on each ring we can read about something significant that happened in Argentina that year. It was really interesting to walk around the park and learn a little more about the history of Argentina.

The park is absolutely huge and we only saw a small portion of it, from which we have a nice panorama on the city.

One site that stands out during the tour is definitely the Capucins church. We aren’t usually big fans of churches but this one is really different.

Very colorful, it was built by a painter, and also it was built relatively late since the construction ended in the 1930s.

Right besides the church you can find the Paseo Buen Pastor, which is an old prison now transformed into an art center with galleries, shops and restaurants. There is a fountain right in front of it, where you can see a light, music and water show every hour at night. It kind of looks like a very small version of what you can see in front of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Around there were a lot of students hanging out and drinking THE national drink in Argentina, maté.

We have to take a minute to talk about the maté because it is a real institution here in Argentina. To Matt, it seems like the least convenient drink on earth. Indeed, you drink it from an open cup full of herbs and with a metallic straw. Basically, you fill the cup with herbs, pour hot water into it and drink from the straw.

You can see in the streets everybody carrying their cup and a thermos full of hot water. They have their hands full all the time. Doesn’t look too practical… But we also learned from our roommates that usually in a group of friends only one person brings all the maté stuff and they all share the same cup. It was really fun to learn about all the traditions and customs around maté drinking. We had no clue! Maté is also loved by students during exam period because it serves as an appetite suppressant and has a lot of caffeine to stay awake.

We finish our guided tour in the Güemes neighborhood, known as the bohemian neighborhood of Cordoba and definitely our favorite area. At first, this was a working-class neighborhood where a lot of European immigrants lived. They lived in huge shared houses, these shared houses have now been transformed in little fashion boutiques, bars and restaurants.

We love it. You can guess where we spent the rest of the evening… We stop in a bar to drink Argentina’s favorite mix drink : Fernet with Coke.

20% of all Fernet in the world is drunk here in Cordoba, and 60% of the world’s consumption happens in Argentina.

Pretty incredible when you think about it, since Fernet is an Italian drink, and they drink it as a digestive after dinner, and certainly not as a cocktail mixed with Coke! And let’s face it, it’s not very good. Fernet is made from plants and is pretty bitter… But we were in Argentina and had to taste a local cocktail, we also had to send a picture to our Argentinian friend Martin, who lives in Chicago, and is probably the only person in all of Chicago to drink Fernet and Coke! Maider hates it, but Matt thinks it gets better after you drink a couple…

Visit of the historical center

For our second day, the weather completely changed, the sun shines and we are in the high 80s. We decide to do another free walking tour, but of the historical city center this time. The guided tour starts on the San Martin plaza. You need to know that ALL the cities main plazas in Argentina are named after the general San Martin, because it is him who helped Argentina, Chili and Peru to gain their independence from Spain.

Right by the Plaza stands the Cathedral.

Once again, the inside is really beautiful.

We walk past the Cabildo. Which had different uses throughout the years, it was place for high society to meet, then it became the mayor’s office, before becoming the police headquarters under the last dictatorship and is now a cultural center.

After the Cabildo, we stopped by a museum that unfortunately was closed. This place is dedicated to remembering the victims of the last dictatorship. Along the wall you can see pictures of some of the people who went missing during this time.

This museum is located in a former detention center used during the dictatorship. And goes over the history of the 30,000 or so people who were kidnapped and “disappeared” because they didn’t agree with the dictatorship in place. A very dark time in Argentina, and even today, we don’t know exactly what happened to a lot of these people.

We continue our visit in the Jesuits square. The Jesuits settled in Cordoba in 1589 and greatly helped developing the city. Indeed, they are the ones who built the university and transformed Cordoba into an important colonial city during the 17th century.

The Jesuits square, also called Manzana Jesuitica, regroups different buildings including the “Capilla Domestica” , the “Colegio Nacional Monserrat” , the “Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus” , the former headquarters of the “Universidad Nacional de Cordoba” and finally the “Residencia“. Here are some of those buildings:

We learned a lot about the city of Cordoba during these two tours, and it was really interesting.

And because we hadn’t eaten steak in a while, we decided to have diner in a Parilla, where they serve meats cooked by wood fire. It was excellent!

After that, we spent the rest of the evening chatting with our roommates. We learned a ton about life in Argentina and had an amazing evening.

Our last couple of days in Cordoba were spent wandering around the streets, spending time in a park watching the people drinking maté or playing soccer. We spent a lot of time in Güemes, having brunch,

or walking around the Paseo de los Artes, which is a small handcraft market,

or tasting some local craft beer in one of the numerous breweries around.

Cordoba has relatively little tourists, because it often only serves as a transition stop between Buenos Aires and Mendoza or Chile, but we think it is totally worth a stop.

We met extraordinary people in our Airbnb, they were so positive and full of life despite the current economic situation in Argentina. They obviously learned how to put things into perspective. It is the first time we really felt at home, sharing breakfasts, dinners and having long conversations. We really felt welcomed and got a glimpse of life in Argentina.

After Cordoba, it is our longest bus journey that awaits us. Indeed we start with an 8 hour, overnight bus to Buenos Aires, and then directly take another bus to Puerto Iguazu. This 18 hour bus ride will bring us to the famous Iguazu falls. We could have gone directly from Cordoba to Puerto Iguazu, but we originally planned to visit Buenos Aires first and then head to Iguazu. But that was before we realized that we would visit the falls over a weekend and we wanted to avoid (at least a little) the crowd. So we would go first to Iguazu and then visit Buenos Aires. At that point, we already had booked our tickets from Cordoba to Buenos Aires. So we had to stick to the plan on going first to Buenos Aires, but we we would travel the same day to Iguazu…