Leaving Cordoba, back to BsAs
I´m back in Buenos Aires. It´s nice to be someplace familiar again, but I have definitely settled into the rhythm of travel and can´t wait to go to the next place. Which is La Paz, Bolivia, the highest altitude city in the world. The more people I talk to, the more I am beginning to regret signing up for a tour of the country. I was a little nervous having heard that Bolivia is very rough, so I booked a 10 day tour. I haven´t taken a tour since 1998, really prefer to travel on my own. However, from talking to people at hostels it sounds like it´s quite accessible, and I would have been fine on my own. Ah well. The bright side is I can turn off my brain a little, not have to think about scheduling buses or finding hostels for a few days.
The bad news is I am spending money more quickly than I thought. My original plan was to head to Chile after Bolivia, then back to BA, then back to NYC. Now I think after Chile I´d really like to head south to Patagonia for a week or two...if the money holds out.
As for Cordoba, I was sad to stay there only one day. Admittedly, much of my stay was augmented by how nice of a hostel I stayed at; the asado (BBQ) Saturday night was a blast, as was checking out the rest of the town: the big Parque Sarmiento, Paseo de Flores, the Museum, and a couple clubs and bars.
My bus left Cordoba, or rather was scheduled to leave, at 11pm yesterday; at 11:20 there was still no sign of the bus. I was getting kind of nervous, but did a good job of not getting upset once I understood that I hadn´t just missed it. Eventually I found a middle aged Argentinian woman who was on my bus too, and we waited together. She didn´t speak any English, but told me all about her family and her vacation, about half of which I understood. We cheered together when the bus arrived, finally, at almost midnight. After I had taken my seat upstairs (she was sitting on the lower level of the bus), the woman found me, gave me a macrame and bead bracelet and necklace she had made, a hug, and her email address, wishing me bueno suerte. It was so sweet! Little things like this make me quite happy, and remind me why I travel.
Now that I am back in the big city, I should mention a few things about it before I forget, both good and...interesting.
- amazing steaks, so cheap. My favorite so far is La Cabrera, but I want to try other places too
- the Sunday market at Plaza Serrano
- the MALBA Museum´s permanent collection of contemporary Latin American art
- cortado (coffee)
- really cheap breezy dresses and clothes
- asado culture, BBQ is a universal activity
- seeing my friend Maurizio play good music at parties
- always needing to have small bills on hand; portenos don´t like to give change for much over a 5 or 10
- so many beautiful plazas and parks everywhere
- good cheap argentinian wine
- Palermo Viejo, a really cute neighborhood
- the difficulty in finding English books not in the genre of Clive Cussler, Danielle Steele, or Stephen King
- the weather: sunny, hot but not humid, always a breeze
- the eagerness with which portenos offer directions
- Parisian-inspired architecture
- dulce de leche
- dulce de leche ice cream at Alta Volta Heladeria
I´m sure there will be more, that´s just off the top of my head. It´s a ridiculously pleasant city.