The best way to see the towns and the countryside around Córdoba is to hire a car and go exploring! But where to go? Here is our quick guide to the towns and villages in the Sierras. The open road The towns are listed in the order we visited them. We hired a car for 4 days (3 nights). We spent most of the first day in Alta Gracia and the night in Belgrano. The following day we were in La Cumbrecita for the…
Chairlift up the Sugar Loaf Mountain near Cosquin While in Córdoba – Argentina’s second city, we hired a car to explore the surrounding countryside, which is dotted with interesting villages as well as beautiful landscapes. We spent most of our first day in Alta Gracia, exploring the Jesuit Estancia and at the Che Guevara museum. To read more about our time in Alta Gracia see this post. Leaving Alta Gracia, we headed to Villa General Belgrano, stopping on the way to take…
James hanging out with Che We’d heard that the countryside surrounding Cordoba was worth a visit, both for the beautiful landscapes as well as the quirky and interesting villages. We hired a car and headed into the hills. After successfully navigating our way out of Córdoba (which is full of one way streets and bus lanes), our first stop was Alta Gracia, where Che Guevara spent his adolescence. Beautiful walkway inside the Jesuit Estancia We started our day in Alta…
Like many (all?) countries in South America, Argentina has a pretty brutal history. Although we’d had some idea of the events of the late 1970s and early 1980s during the time of the military dictatorship, the guide on our walking tour in Buenos Aires really brought home the brutality of the regime, when he highlighted that from 1976 to 1983 up to 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ by the military. We were particularly struck by the stories of the estimated 500 children who…
A central error in our destination choices for this trip has been that we are following winter around! We left the UK in early March, at the beginning of Spring and travelled further south in South America as their winter approached. We return to the UK in September, just in time for autumn! We decided to take advantage of this all too obvious schoolboy error and organized a week’s skiing in Las Leñas – reportedly the best ski resort in South America. We…
Pretty walkway in Tres Bocas An hour’s train ride north out of Buenos Aires and you find yourself in a completely different world. Wooden walkway The town of Tigre and the surrounding Parana Delta is a popular getaway for Porteños (people from Buenos Aires) and tourists alike. Waterway, Tres Bocas The area is a web of inter-connecting waterways that take you to small islands lined with wooden walkways that pass pretty houses and guest houses on stilts, restaurants, rowing clubs and even boat…
Painting of Juan and Eva Peron in La Casa Rosada La Casa Rosada Anyone who has watched Evita will remember seeing Eva and Juan Peron making impassioned speeches from the balcony of the ‘pink house’ or Casa Rosada – the presidential offices – to thousands of adoring supporters in the Plaza de Mayo. Casa Rosada by night Interested in political history (and having not long re-watched Evita, before our trip began!), I was pleased to learn that there were free tours…
On one of our afternoons in Buenos Aires we went on a Foto Ruta Iphoneography workshop and tour to help us to better use our iPhones for taking street photos. The workshop and tour took us around the Palermo area of Buenos Aires – a leafy middle class area filled with restaurants, bars, parks, museums and night clubs. Leafy … We’d not explored the area much during the day and so this was a good opportunity for us to get…
On our first night in Buenos Aires, we headed to see the Fuerza Bruta show. I’d first heard of this from some fellow travellers in Sucre, who had managed to describe it as a bit like Cirque de Soleil, but crazier. They said they’d seen it on tour in London, but that its home was Buenos Aires and urged us to go, while we were there. We heard about it again as we got closer to BA, but other than…
Argentine National Congress Buenos Aires was fun and interesting city to while away a week. There was so much to see and do there, we could have stayed much longer. Arrival Our arrival into the city felt almost like going home … it was raining! A LOT. The city is also very European looking and apart from the big light up image of Evita on one of the buildings on “the widest avenue in the world”, Avenida 9 de Julio*,…