Our Great Adventure: Cordoba Day 238 14/05/2015

We'd decided to go on a walking tour of the city in the afternoon and spent the morning doing a few chores. We had breakfast at a local cafe which was the arrangement with the hotel. It was definitely a locals place and for once the medialunas actually tasted like croissants! Afterwards we dropped off our laundry, changed our Uruguayan pescos into Argentinian pescos and walked to the bus station to buy tickets for our onward journey to Salta. We had debated whether to stop over in Tucamen but have decided to do the full journey in one long day and have more time in Salta and the surrounding area. The tour was starting at 1400 which meant we had time for lunch at a very busy local cafe called Alfonsimo, before walking to Plaza San Martin where it was due to start. We saw the last part of the ceremony to celebrate Paraguay's independence, who unlike the other South American countries declared theirs on 14th May (rather than 25th). Listening to a rendition of "The Final Post" was quite earie. We did wonder if we'd be the only people on the tour but were joined by eleven others. Corboda is home to seven universities which is reflected in the age of the population with the streets filled with students. It has a strong colonial history with a number of original buildings still in existence although many have been replaced by significantly less attractive concrete blocks. In the centre of the Plaza is a statue of the now very recognisable Jose de San Martin (he certainly does get everywhere) and it's surrounded on one side by the restored cabildo (town council) and in the southwest corner the Iglesia Catedral with a beautiful romanesque dome. Building first began in 1577 and it is now a mix of three styles. We walked along the side of the cathedral where photographs of the 'disappeared' were hanging across the narrow street; it would appear after BA, Cordoba had the highest number of people taken by the military junta, most of them students and university workers. We continued to the Jesuit church, recently visited by the Pope Francis I who is Argentinian. From there we saw many different styles of old houses (Spanish, French and British), including one of the narrowest in the world (apparently!) We then walked towards Neuvo Cordoba passed the oldest university and crossing the famous Paseo del Beun Pastor and onto the very gothic Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, built in the 1930's by some British communists. We finished our tour near the Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita, said our goodbyes and stopped off at the Mandarina cafe for some fruit juice on our way back to the hotel. We noticed next door that their was a hairdressers so Simon called in for a much need trim whilst Diane stayed at the hotel to arrange payment for our journey from San Pedro in Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia. It didn't start well finding out that the bank she use to work for was now charging £13 a month for the pleasure of having a current account with them. We don't use the account but do want to keep it as back up just in case. Our other bank then stopped the payment for our trip and sent a text requesting authorisation. Our phone needed topping up in order to do this but our credit card provider blocked the transaction, sending a text requesting authorisation. We tried to phone using Skype but the wifi was so intermittent that we finally gave up and used the land line. Western Union who we were making the payment through then blocked the payment. All in all it took nearly 3 hours to make what should have been a very simply payment! In the evening we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Argentinian's are mad about football and the Copa Liberators cup (South America's Champions League) second leg of the Boca Junior and River Plate game was on the television. This game of the top two Buenos Aires teams has a long, often turbulent history and is dubbed the "superclassico". This was the third game between these 2 teams in the last 12 days and passions and tempers amongst the fans was running high. The River Plate team were attacked with pepper spray as they came through the tunnel for the second half. Play was temporarily suspended whilst the officials decided what to do before the match was finally abandoned. It was interesting to watch how the situation was managed and how different this may have been if the incident had occurred in the UK or Europe.