Cordoba

Cordoba is the second largest city in Argentina.  I realized that it's quite likely that you don't know where most of these places are, so I'm gonna start putting links to locations in my posts.  If that gets annoying, say so and I'll stop doing it.

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Argentines know about Hannah Montana.  I'm not a city guy.  Sometimes Argentine spaghetti sauce is brown. Smoking and jogging go together like a fried egg and a hamburger.

So I arrived from Posadas after a 17 or so hour bus ride in a non-reclining chair next to a large argentine woman into the bus station in Cordoba.  Upon descending from the bus, I realized I had done little to no research about the city and more importantly, where to stay.  I had a vague idea of where a hostel might be and after about half an hour of walking around in circles, I found Che Salguero.  Great hostel.  The guys were cool and the place was nice.  Second favorite hostel so far, probably, behind the one in Posadas.

After dropping off my bags and doing a quick internet check of the area, I walked towards the main area and came across the Iglesia Catedral.

From Cordoba

It was pretty impressive, but since I don't particularly enjoy going into buildings where pedophilia is cool, I decided not to pay the entrance fee and just admired the architecture from the outside.  There was also the Manzana Jesuitica nearby, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  Which is just a block of Jesuit buildings and also had pretty sweet architecture.  Unfortunately, it's surrounded by narrow crowded streets and there weren't too many places to take a good picture.  It's a common theme in Cordoba.  Beautiful architecture, but hard to find a place to capture the beauty.  They describe it as a mix of new and old in guidebooks and it's really very accurate.

Inside the Manzana Jesuitica, there seemed to be a fully functional university.  Which was a little confusing, since I thought this place was supposed to be preserved for tourists to walk around and take pictures of.  One awesome side effect of this was a sweet tile periodic table.

From Cordoba

After rambling about more around the city, I returned to the hostel.  Sitting there, I overheard a conversation between an argentine guy and an american girl.  They were switching between Spanish and English so I understood most of it.  But then when the conversation hit a lull, he said, "Hannah Montana".  The conversation was then taken over by where she was from, etc.  And throughout the rest of my time in Cordoba, Hannah Montana was a subject of conversation.  This is what people know of about America.  Could be worse.

Anyways, I decided to make dinner.  I bought some sausage (chorizo), some spaghetti sauce which I translated to be with garlic and onions and some spaghetti.  Upon opening, the sauce was brown and very salty.  Combined with the chorizo, it was most likely the worst spaghetti ever made.  But it was food, so I ate it.

The next day, I bought a bus ticket to Mendoza, then walked around the city more.  I got a little lost, sat down in a park and realized I had no more interest in seeing big cities.  Or at least not for a while.  While I was sitting on the bench, a jogger stopped, stretched, pulled out a pack of smokes, lit up, took a few puffs and continued running.  Argentina.

There's also another pic of a cool building on my camera, as well as others from Mendoza, where I currently am.  When I get around to downloading those pics, I'll put 'em on the appropriate site and update you on Mendoza.

South American Route

Combination of where I've been (BA-> Cordoba, A->D) and where I'm going (Mendoza-> La Paz, E->G).  Of course, where I'm going is still up in the air!


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Iguazu and Posadas

Here are the most recent posts about what I've been upto and what I've seen over the last few days:

A lazy post about Iguazu Falls.

A more detailed post about the falls.

Somethin about the border of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

Posadas and the ruins of the Jesuit Missions.

Up next, a 17 hour bus ride to Cordoba, most likely followed by a trip over to Mendoza.

Oh yeah, emo hair has made its way onto the heads of school children in Posadas.  That and mullets.

Posadas y los Ruinas Jesuiticas

I walked into the bus terminal and went with the first place that would take me to Posadas because I heard it was 45 pesos regardless of the company.  So I hopped on the bus and it wasn't exactly luxurious.  And by that, I mean it was a dump.  Not that bad, but it wasn't a bus that catered to tourists.  It was only 5.5 hours, and I slept the whole way so no big deal.

From the bus terminal, I hopped on a local bus to the hostel in Posadas.  Hostel Vuela el Pez.  It's the first hostel that I've stayed at with some character.  The reception desk is just a dude lyin in a couch.  Walking in, you see a nice courtyard with a little clean pool and some hammocks hanging around.  The whole place is pretty clean and it's pretty much what I pictured when I imagined hostel living, as compared to the other backpacker havens teeming with Europeans where I'd been staying.  I walked around the waterfront (Posadas is on the Rio Parana), found a pizzeria, had an empanada and a pizza.  Later at the Hostel, I met a guy who I'd seen in Iguazu.  We were both here to see the Jesuit ruins and agreed to go to them together the next morning.

A little history about the ruins:  In the early 1600's, I guess the Jesuits came over and set up these missions to evangelize the local Guarani people.  To do so, they built around 30 or so missions all around the area and helped the Guarani come out of the forest and taught them how to farm and what not so they'd stop eating each other.  But Brazil and Argentina and kings and queens and other royalty apparently preferred that the Guarani eat each other because then they'd be easier to enslave and kicked the Jesuits out of the country.  After the Jesuits left, the Guarani took off and the ruins were left to rot and I think they may have been destroyed.  And then rebuilt in the 1900's.  I may have missed some facts here and there, but that's the gist of it.  Anyways, they're a UNESCO world heritage site, so it seemed worth checkin out.

There were three that we wanted to go to, San Ignacio, Loreto and Santa Ana.  San Ignacio was the furthest away so we went to that first.  After an 8 peso, 1-hour bus ride and a 15 minute walk, we got into San Ignacio and we see this:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

Walking around, you see more ruins.  It's pretty impressive.  Fun fact: the buildings were originally white, but because of the deep red soil that covers the entire area, they stones have been turned red.  At least that's what my dutch travel partner, Ado, told me.  We hop on a bus to Loreto, but not before Ado runs out into the street and almost gets hit by a truck.  Hopping off the bus, we start the 3km walk to the ruins.  It was hot. And there was no shade.  A guide meets us and tells us stories about the ruins, etc.  But the ruins themselves aren't all that much to look at.  Without the guide, it would have been pretty frustrating to have walked all that way for this:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

After waiting on the side of the road for half an hour, a bus finally stops for us and we take it to the next stop. We walk 1-1.5km to the Santa Ana ruins and the guide there speaks no English.  So we decide not to take her up on her offer of a guided tour because neither of us could really understand her, though Ado's spanish is much better than mine.  There were several workers doin their thing and scaffolding around some of the ruins as they work to restore the ruins.  It made me realize that the San Ignacio site looked just like the other two, but then they were recently made to look very pretty.  Anyways, here's a pic of the Santa Ana site:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

We luck out after the walk back to the main road and hop on a bus right away and get back to Posadas.  Tired and hungry, I scarf down a hamburguesa completa (hamburger with ham and cheese and fried egg) and sleep well.

Tres Fronteras

Tres Fronteras is just a few km away from the center of Puerto Iguazu, but because I couldn't find any road signs, I got lost.  Along the way, I managed to find where all the youths of Puerto Iguazu hang out around sunset.  I took the back way to the Hito Argentina and along the way, found teenagers just hangin out around their cars blaring techno/party music out of huge speakers in the back of their hatchbacks.  Further up the hill there were two guys standing next to a Honda Civic playing Lady Gaga through their possibly factory car stereo.  It was sad for them.  At the top of the hill, I found a tour bus.  And with the tour bus, naturally, a bunch of tourists.  I couldn't really get a clear view of the obelisk, but here's the best I could do:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

Looking out upon the horizon, you see this:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

In the foreground is Argentina.  The piece of land on the right is Brazil.  The piece of land on the left is Paraguay.  Way in the back is Ciudad de Este in Paraguay, I think.  On Picasa, you can see the corresponding obelisks for the other two countries.  Nothing amazing, but just cool to see because as an American it's as close as you're gonna get to those two countries without paying the reciprocity visa fees.

I got a bit lost again on the way back to the hostel but ended up there eventually.  In retrospect, I probably should have taken the bus for the most pleasant experience, but it was fun getting lost in this little city.  And it was not at all dangerous, so not a big deal.  When I got back, a recent Cal graduate approached me because I've been representin' my alma mater the whole trip.  He had a few beers by the time I went over to join him and he was your typical obnoxious, loud, drunk American.  But I can't really blame him because he's still young, and more importantly, his school sucks.

I spent the night in Puerto Iguazu and the next day went via bus to Posadas.

Iguazu Falls (detail)

It was mostly awe that limited the length of the last post.  Well, that and an extreme bout of laziness.  But a place as amazing as Iguazu Falls really does require a lengthier post.

Lessons learned: Argentinians love Antonio Banderas.  7up here tastes like Froot Loops.  Butterflies feel just like any other insect when they land on you.  Water is amazing.  I have very little in common with recent college graduates.

So I got on a bus at 3:00pm on Friday with a friend from the Spanish class, Tish.  I fell asleep as soon as they started playing some Antonio Banderas movie with Morgan Freeman.  When I awoke a few hours later, they were playing some Antonio Banderas movie with Rebecca Romijn Stamos.  Then they put on Couples Retreat in espanol. Somewhere in there we got a snack of croissants and a dinner of meat and potatoes and something.  With dinner, they served 7up.  After much deliberation, Tish finally spotted the flavor of 7up as Froot Loops.  I fell asleep pretty quickly and when I awoke, we were about 2 or 3 hours away from Puerto Iguazu.  Tish later told me that there were cockroaches on the bus and her seat didn't recline.

We chose a hostel right across from the Bus Terminal, the MarcoPolo Inn, mostly for it's convenience, checked in and made it to the falls as soon as possible.  After paying the AR$85 entrance fee, we took the quaint little train to el Garganta del Diablo.  The whole ride, you see tons and tons of butterflies just flitting about.  We were starving and I had the worst empanadas ever at the fast food place at the end of the train station.  This is when I almost killed a butterfly because I thought it was a mosquito or something.  After this near death encounter with a mariposa, we made our way to the walkway out to the Devil's Throat.  It was a nice path over the Rio Iguazu, and the weather was just gorgeous.  After maybe 5-10 minutes, you see this:

From Iguazu Falls

And you start to get really excited.  Then you walked further and the sound of rushing water gets louder and louder.  The mist from the falls starts to soak you and then you see it.  You turn your head and see more.  And then you turn your head and see more.  You walk to a different side of the platform and you see more.  There's really no way I can do it justice.  Even the pictures are insufficient.  The videos come close.  But really, it's just an amazing experience.  

From Iguazu Falls

We decided to buy the Passporte Verde, which included a canoe ride back down the river to one of the stations instead of taking the train back, a jungle tour on a truck and a speedboat ride that takes you ridiculously close to the falls.  The canoe ride was peaceful and we saw a little baby caiman, it looked like a big lizard.  The jungle cruise was nice and we saw a toucan and a bunch of huge spiders.  The speedboat ride was amazing.  You get close to the other part of the falls, then the devil's throat, but you don't get wet.  It's mostly just to take pictures.  Then they tell you to put your stuff in dry bags.  Since my camera's waterproof, it stayed out.  There's video of the dousing that we got.  It was exhilirating.  On the walk out of the park, we saw more coatis and some capuchin monkeys.


The next morning, I looked at my pictures, realized the town didn't really have much else to offer so I went back to the park.  As long as you get your ticket stamped when you leave the first day, the second day only costs AR$45.  I took my time and the weather was even better.  I found some better/different viewpoints.  The mist from at el Garganta del Diablo wasn't as overwhelming so I think I got some better pics.  And it was just amazing to soak it all in.


After leaving the park I went to Tres Fronteras, the confluence of some rivers and the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

Iguazu Falls

Wow. Just. Wow.

From Iguazu Falls

Up next: Posadas and the ruins of Jesuit Missions