Cordoba, Argentina

We took the overnight bus from the massive Retiro terminal in Buenos Aires to Cordoba on the Tues 27th November and arrived just after sunrise the next morning, a 10 hour trip.  We were fortunate to make contact with some lovely people in Cordoba through an internet project called "couch surfing", a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit.  Rolando Cosacov and his family offered us hospitality for 3 nights and were gracious hosts indeed. 

as were their 4 dogs; ¨Iggy¨ the wippet (above, right, named after Iggy Pop) was a favourite. (The bottom doggy is the daughter of Iggy and his missus.)  Our stay coincided with a heat wave of 40 deg temperatures, so our excursions into the city were a little limited.  We did enjoy some evening excursions though with various members of the Cosacov clan - a tour with Rolando of the sights on our first evening, a visit to a local music club with elder son Frederico until the wee hours of the morning, and a trip to the theatre to watch a local adaptation of a Chekov play.  Like everywhere we have visited in Argentina, people are out and about in the cities until very late, often eating dinner at 10 or 11pm. 
Cordoba itself is a beautiful old, highly urban little area encircled by be the natural beauty of mountains and such. We visited a few of the churches, a couple of which were built by the Jesuits when they were based here in the 17th and 18th centuries.

...and an old residence that was the home for a time for a certain Marquis, and has now been restored into a very interesting museum to life as it was in Cordoba in the early 1800s.

Dan got to play the antique mini-church organ here - one of the museum guides happily worked away at the hand bellows while a warped version of Amazing Grace seeped out.

Father ´Capuccinno´, patron of one of the beautiful churches (and presumably of all good italian coffee).

The fortress like entrance to the main Jesuit church in the centre of Cordoba.  This church is situated next to a school and university established by this Catholic order.

While Dan went off hunting for bus tickets for the next stage of travels, Hero and Delia visited the provincial Natural Sciences museum.  Hero especially loved the large spiral access ways and ran up and down them a few times.

We also met up with another couch-surfer host, Daniel, whom it was very interesting to talk with about his experiences working with UN-micro-financed NGOs in Argentina; and who also, happily, in the 40·+ weather, had a pool that we cooled ourselved down in, after which each of the Dans had a play on the baby grand...

Hero was very pleased to find an amusement park in one of the malls, which was interesting enough for more than an hour without needing to insert one coin! (travelling parents´ favourite kind) :