Córdoba!

Greetings from Córdoba! We left Puerto Madryn last Thursday and grabbed a night bus to Córdoba, arriving a little late on Friday morning. We had made plans to stay with a fellow couchsurfer here, and called him when we arrived. We still hadn´t yet purchased a SIM card for Argentina, so while we were in the locutorio we inquired in that regard. We decided to pick up a $5 SIM card (a little over $1 US) so that we could communicate while we are here. Carlos, whom we met on couchsurfing, picked us up and took us to his apartment before he went back to work. We relaxed for a little bit, then made plans to meet up with our friend Paula, who is a university student here in Córdoba. We wandered around the city a bit until we met her and then she gave us a walking/driving tour of the city. We saw many important buildings, as well as the University City. There are a lot of universities and colleges here and the city has a very youthful feel to it. It is also significantly warmer than the last few places we have been. We have even had to use the air conditioning, a welcome change from the snowy Ushuaia.

On Saturday we explored the city some more and in the early afternoon we decided to escape the heat by watching a movie. We saw the new 007 movie and I think it´s fair to say that we were the only people not reading the subtitles judging by when we laughed and when the rest of the audience laughed. We went out to dinner with Carlos and a few of his friends and tried some interesting new empanadas. On Sunday we took the bus up to the Sierras around Córdoba. In the Sierras there are a lot of quaint little towns and villages and it seems like a weekend/summer getaway for a lot of the city dwellers. We hiked around for a little bit and eventually settled down on a ¨beach¨for a few hours. This beach is actually the bank of a river, and there were plenty of hippies hanging out with their juggling, guitar-playing, substance-smoking selves. After a quick lunch at the Argentina standard lunchtime of about 4:00 PM we grabbed a bus back to town.

Yesterday we made the superhuman effort of waking up early so that we could go see a few musuems in town. We went to the Cabildo, a municipal building sort of like city hall which has a musuem and then ventured to a few other musuems in the city only to discover that they are closed on Mondays! We had no other choice but to eat. We found a nice little cafe in the square and I had a few medialunas (croissants) and Sarah had some cold cuts. We came back to Carlos´apartment for a brief siesta, then took our books to the park for an afternoon of reading. On the way we decided to get a pancho, which is Argentine Spanish for hot dog. As you might expect, a hot dog here is nothing like a hot dog in America. My hot dog came with olives, onions, cheese, chimichurri sauce, a ¨rain¨of french fries, and chopped up tomatoes and onions. Sarah was less adventurous with her hot dogging, but redeemed herself with a trip to the ice cream truck next door. It was so hot in the park that after reading for a little bit we decided to go to a little cafe and have a beer to cool off. Today we are going to try to get to the musuems again, and tomorrow we head off to Buenos Aires!