So the second day I was in Cordoba, since I had seen everything in the city the previous day during my endless search for an ATM, there wasn´t much left to see in the city. I scheduled a mountain bike ride in Alta Gracia which is about an hour bus ride from Cordoba. Upon waking up in the morning, I found it was raining – like a hurricane. So I had to throw the biking idea out the window.
I looked through some books and discovered that Che Guevara grew up in Alta Gracia from the age of 4 through most of his childhood – so off I went to the bus station.
The bus station itself was a madhouse, but eventually I found the 3 peso bus (about 90 cents) to Alta Gracia. The bus itself held about 16 people and was pretty comfortable. The bus got into Alta Gracia and took various stops and completely desolate places as well as several fruit stands that were in the middle of nowhere. Finally, the bus stopped at the final stop in god-knows-where Alta Gracia. There was nobody in the bus stop except me, nobody in the streets except me (as well as dogs and random roaming horses), but at least Che´s house was close.
His neighborhood was a relatively prominent area it seems. Compared to the rest of the city, it´s full of palaces. The house was cool, full of bicycles, motorcycles, maps of where he went, letters he wrote, etc. etc. Aside from the tour, Alta Gracia is relatively boring and full of dirt roads, and it appeared that absolutely nothing was open. Not even houses had open windows or anything. It was like I walked into a ghost city. So after stumbling around for 2 hours, I headed back to the bus station.
The workers at the train station were apparently taking a million hour siesta, so I was left with the option of just sitting on a bench and watching the dogs and horses wander around. Occassionally a bus would show up and I´d ask the driver if he was going to Cordoba. One eventually was and I got the bus back for a cool 3 pesos.
Alta Gracia is boring.
I arrived at a different bus station in Cordoba (which ended up being the one I would leave from that night), so I explored the neighborhood where I found some local restaurant. I sat down and after around 20 minutes of watching Argentinas version of the Biggest Loser, somebody came up to me and in the most extreme Castellano voice, he asked me what I wanted and told me there was no menu. Great. I ordered a Milanesa de pollo, but the way he pronounced it, he made it seem like I had the option of ordering Milanesa de carne (meat) or de porzo/pozo/postre/any other similar sounding word.
That meal (milanesa, mixed salad, bottled water) set me back a HUGE 7 pesos. Whoa man, I better start budgeting.
I went back to the hostel and just took a nap before my 11:30 bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina.
The bus station was a mad house and my bus ticket advised for me to look for the bus from the stops 15 through 30 (way to narrow it down for me, that´s half the station). The bus arrived about 30 minutes late and was incredible. We´re talking huge gigantic recliner like seats. It was so nice I would´ve taken that bus across the world. They even had somebody pass us out sandwiches, and a sweet dulce de leche treat in the morning. Amazing.
I arrived into Mendoza around 10 AM and made my way to the hostel which was just a 10 minute walk to the west. Since it was early, I decided that I would probably need to do something that day even though I was exhausted. I ended up taking a tour of 2 wineries and a tour of an olive oil factory in the Mendozan suburb of Maipu. It was nice, but I was completely beat by the end. I got back around 7 PM, ate and went to sleep.
This morning the weather was still pretty bad (sporadically raining and overcast like the day before, but I decided to rent a bicycle anyway. I went to the store to buy some breakfast (where I´m known as the person who left without his 50 pesos in change – which I subsequently lost anyway) and after, I went and to rent a bicycle to cruise around El Parque San Martin – a park to the west of the city that is bigger than Central Park in New York City. The map of the city is completely worthless in the park, and I found that roads went nowhere that the map indicated. I ended up riding to a million different places, but always ending up in the same place in the end. Bohuzel. After I abandoned the map idea, I resorted to riding to the highest point of the park and riding as fast as possible down. It was really nice outside when I was riding around, so it was pretty worthwhile.
I decided to post because the place I rented from the bike from is…closed, on siesta, lunch…or something. I have no idea where they are. They just have a sign that says (in Spanish) “Bell doesn´t work, scream or sing strongly (loudly). They have my state ID, and frankly, I still want it. I don´t know what I´m going to do if they don´t open again. Maybe sell the bike?
Posted by thegoggins 
Posted by thegoggins 
Posted by thegoggins 