Day 55: A day in the life of Cordoba

The back end of the bus journey was pretty horrendous. We seemed to stop all the time. Unloading half the bus only to have the same amount of people loaded on like cattle. The lights would come on and your blissful sleep would be interrupted. Thankfully we arrived into Cordoba at 10am as expected instead of the seemingly usual 6am or before. The taxi driver found our accommodation with ease and we managed to get into the flat with similar ease. We sat down and had a coffee with our host. He didn't speak much English but there seemed to be a bit of a conversation going somehow. He gave us some tips on what to do in Cordoba. The thing that seemed to stand out the most was a free walking tour at 5pm. This gave us several hours to arguably kill before then. 

We headed into the main area and explored. In the main park, a kickaround was occurring. The quality wasn't too bad. It was a lot better than some of the drivel we had previously seen. I really wanted to join in but thought better of the idea. The language barrier added to my walking boots would only lead to pure embarrassment. I decided that lunch was a better idea instead. After wandering through the streets for a while, we came to the bus terminal. We were able to book our next bus for the following day - a 20 hour juggernaut over to the very North-Western point of Argentina: Puerto Iguazu. Now in Puerto Iguazu lied Emma's majority reason for agreeing to travel South America over another location - perhaps the more cliché Thailand, or the ease of an English (at a push) speaking country such as Australia and New Zealand. That was Iguazu Falls, one of the biggest waterfall systems in the world and a natural wonder of the world. 

Dragging a beaming Emma, we headed into the gigantic park that was very close to where our tour would begin little over an hour later. This seemed to be the fitness centre of the entirety of South America. I saw more people doing exercise, mostly running, than I had done in the entire trip combined so far. Countless runners entertain the mild winter climate of Cordoba and it's aesthetic surroundings.  

We met up with our tour. This time it was a much more manageable six people, as opposed to the twenty odd that hampered our time in Santiago. The guide mixed between Spanish and English, often at times he would spend too long on one language and lose some of the interest of the small group. He had good knowledge however and took us through some interesting parts of the city.  

The most interesting part of the tour was at the location of a former women's prison in the centre of town. They had closed it down since the start of the century and transformed it. They had taken down some of the walls, given it a lick of paint and installed a very impressive water fountain system. At 7pm the water fountain display started. Music played in the background as a pre-programmed sequence of lights and flying water entertained us. This entertainment was followed up by a very interesting church. It only had one spire (some rubbish about not making it perfect), the colours were a mix of blue, red and yellow and the detail was fascinating. They were doing a bit of restoration on it unfortunately and our view was slightly blemished. 

As we were sat outside of the church we were distracted by a loud and disruptive crowd that was marching through the streets (the South Americans and their protests). Apparently they were protesting to the government over the overnight closure of a factory of 6000 people supposedly. The influx of poor quality (and low cost) Chinese imports had left a lack of need for a lot of the factory workers in Argentina and they were rebelling. I guess I could sort of see where they were coming from, but at the same time we've noticed that they will protest over anything. 

At the end of the tour our group shared some beers in a light cafe before we parted ways. He had given us some recommendations for dinner but we decided to ignore them all. They all seemed a bit out of our desired budget. By chance we found a cheap restaurant. They did a huge burger and some fries for a very reasonable price. This went down very well before we headed back to the accommodation. A quick trip to the swings later and we were back and getting ourselves ready for bed. These night buses make it quite easy to take it out of you. That will be one of the aspects that I won't really miss - then being able to have a bed every night.