Howard Johnson Cordoba Rio Ceballos

We arrived this morning knowing we did not want to spend long in another city and knowing we wanted to head to Mendoza as soon as we could. Rob decided we would leave our baggage at the bus terminal and get the bus this evening so I write this now having spent yesterday wondering around Rosario, the night on the bus and now another day walking around a city. We smell and are tired but have ...

... as a person. Here I´m a part of a family...and it feels like I´ve digressed. Nobody here leaves home until they´re married pretty much, so college isn´t all that different from high school. It´s hard to have almost total independence and trade it in for being 15 again. I mean, I can´t drive, I rarely get to cook for myself, and I always feel like they´re juding me. <br><br>What I wouldn´t give to be Superman...

... in Alta Gracia, about an hour bus ride from Cordoba. I asked someone at my hotel if it would be open on Monday (because I had a museum guide and a few museums were closed on Mondays), asked at the bus station, and spoke with a guy at the fruit stand. They all said it was definitely open. So, of course I get there and it does open on Mondays, but not until 2 pm! I had a 4 pm bus and had an hour ride back to Cordoba, had ...

... and people-watching which I like anyway so I dont regret spending a short time here. As with all Latin America cities there is a plaza at the heart of things , in this case the "Plaza San Martin" which naturally has the cathedral one one side. The cathedral is apparently the oldest in Argentina but although the design is quite nice it looks a bit worse for wear due to the heavy staining on the yellowy coloured stone ...

Last night Juan and Mary, his girlfriend, took us and a friend, Maria, out to dinner at a local restaurant where we ate traditional northern-Argentinian food, empandas and thick meat and corn stews. We drank good wine and returned to the house to drink more good wine and prepare our brand new mates, before me and peta opted out of sampling the nightlife at 2am (still the normal time to go out here) in favor of an early night. We had ...

... We have done all the walking to be done and visited all that had to be visited here. There is a serious lack of museums in this place which is where the first university of Argentina was first established by the Jesuits - and that is very dissappointing. Lack of shops to buy perfume, clothes and technology there are NOT...thats how Cordoba is. Sadly as we dont want to carry any more weight we havent actually bought anything apart from our mate ...

... of them, I have decided that the 120 Peso (about 35US) price tag for a cell phone was well worth it. I tried finding a used one, but they were almost the same price of a new one, so I just bought a new one. So my number within Argentina is: (0351) 15 688-3587 and when calling from the US, it is supposed to be: (011) 54-9-351-688-3587 but for some reason it hasn't worked when people have called internationally. I will see if I can figure it out.

... speaking hostel, fantastic! However...I have found it sooooo difficult. The accent in Argentina is really different. They pronounce the ´double l´ differently and drop letters like ´s´ at the end of words - I think I´ve just learned what it´s like to be a non-Scottish, English speaking person, on a trip to my homeland, ha ha! They couldn´t understand me either...and so to compensate myself, I now seem to be speaking Spanish with a strong ...

After Buenos Aires, it was another two days' long drive to the Cordoba province, in Argentina's Central Sierras region. After a short stop at Cordoba City (the second largest city in Argentina), we headed to an estancia in the nearby mountain and stayed there for 3 nights. Estancia, basically is "an extensive ranch for cattle or sheep, with an owner or manager (estanciero) and dependent labor force ...

... planned to stay 2 nights but on the first i started reading about brasil and got way too excited so i decided that i needed to start making my way back in that direction. the strangest part of carlos paz is that they have this famous "monument" called el cucu which is like a main attraction... check out the photos because it's bloody hilarious. here they are!