Making My Way through Small Cities

Wednesday, Feb. 2

The owner of the residential where I have been staying said that this cold weather is very unusual for this time of the year. He said it was 5 C (41 F)= here yesterday and will still be down to 8 C (46 F) tomorrow. He said it is normally swimming weather now.
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It´s been a busy, tiring day. I left V.G.B. at 9Ñ30 and arrived in Córdoba at 11:00 with a long list of things to do:

1. Check into hotel. I returned to the Hotel Victoria where I had made a reservation before leaving.


2. Find a laundry. My clothes were almost all dirty. I had seen laundries before, but I didn´t remember exactly where. I walked up and down the nearby streets until I found one I liked. Later, I took my clothes there and then picked them up in the evnening. Total Cost: $ 1.67 U.S.

3. See the Marqués de Sobremonte Museum. This is the only remaining colonial home in Córdoba. I missed it before, because it is closed on weekends. It was interesting to see how people lived in luxury 200-300 years ago.

4. Have lunch. I stopped at a nearby place and had arroz con pollo (chicken and rice). It was a tasty mixture of rice, peas, onions, lentils, cheese, and chicken.

5. Get a bus ticket for tomorrow. I had hoped to leave for Santa Fe (a five-hour trip) around 9:30 or 10:00. The only choices, however, were 7:30 or 1:30. I took the morning departure and dread having to set my alarm tonight.

6. Go the the ATM. One problem here is that banks have their ATMs in locked rooms that require a LOCAL bank card to open the door. It is frustrating and embarrassing to have to wait for someone to enter and then go in behind them before the door closes. That´s what I have been doing. Here in Córdoba, fortunately, there is an alternative. A large mall has an ATM in the lobby, so I went there today.

7. Go to a cyber cafe. It had been 3 days since I had updated my blog. It was a frustrating experience, since I lost an entry when posting to the blog failed. It happens occasionally and is always disappointing. I also checked websites for places in Buenos Aires and sent an e-mail trying to make a reservation at one of them. I should have a response by tomorrow.

It took until 7:30 p.m. to finish all of that. I returned to the hotel and prepared for an early bedtime.

Walking: 22,804 steps (15,737 aerobic steps), 948 calories, 15.5 km (9.3 miles)


Thursday, Feb. 3

As expected, I diodn´t sleep well last night. I never do when I have to rely on an alarm clock. I turned on the lamp and checked the time 4-5 times during the night.

I am now in Santa Fe. It is not a very pretty town in general. There is too much of a hodgepodge of various types of buildings. Among them all, however, are some wonderful older ones. They tend to be ornate with fancy stone carvings or pasterwork. They also tend to have detailed grills over the windows. Often, the outter doors are open giving a view of expensive tile walls and intricately carved inner doors with beveled and etched glass panels.

Santa Fe is also a university town. The biggest and oldest university has 29,000 students and is near my hotel. Because of all the students, the nearby older neighborhood of about 15-20 square blocks is an entertainment district with cafes, restaruants, bars, gyms, etc. It is the summer holidays now, so I don´t know how lively it will be tonight. I may go out walking to see.

My hotel is nice. It´s about 15 blocks from the bus station. I decided on it as the highest rated at the best price within my price range, and it was a good choice. After checking in, I started walking toward townb looking for a restaurant. I saw one with several occupied tables and decided it was worth trying. After entering, I looked around, and the family that had sat in front of me on the bus was dining there. How did we ever end up at the same spot so far from the bus station and not even between it and anything else of significance in town?!!

I ordered one of the menus of the day—palominos rellenos. I had no idea what to expect. Of course, the thought that it could be horsemeat went through my mind because of the name. It seemed to be skirt steak (like is used for making fajitas). It had been rolled around a stuffing of boiled eggs, greens (spinach?), and onions and then grilled. There were three slices. I chose a mixed salad as my side dish (versus fried potatoes).

On the way back from exploring downtown, I got two big dips of ice cream—cinnamon coconut and banana with dulce con leche. Both were delicious, but the latter was the tastiest.

I forgot to mention the bus trip. It was five hours from Córdoba to here. The whole way was through flat, lush farmland. I am not sure what the crops, other than corn, were that were growing in the fields. There was a stewardess who was working hard the whole way. She served us cookies and coffee. Then she served candies. Later, there was another kind of cookie with juice or coffee. Then candy again. Next came sandwiches and popcorn with juice. Then came hot broth as we were crossing the bridge into Santa Fe. (Sandwiches, by the way, are rather horrible here unless a special one like lomito is ordered. A “normal” sandwich consists of thinly sliced mushy white bread with the crust cut off, a very thin slice of meat, a very thin slice of cheese, and another piece of white bread. Yuck!)

I explored the local enighborhood again at night. There are sidewalk cafes everywhere. There is also a nice mini-mall where I bought some olives and a mini-quiche to have for dinner in the room.

Walking: 26,785 steps (21,785 aerobic steps), 1071 calories, 17.78 km (10 ½ miles)


Friday, Feb. 4 (Part I)

This is an area where several rivers come together. The land between Santa Fe and Paraná (32 km/18 miles) is all river flood zones. The Paraná river is so wide that they built a tunnel rather than a bridge to get past it.

It took me less than 2 hours to check out in Santa Fe, walk the 15 blocks to the bus station, catch a bus, come to Paraná, check with the tourist office at the bus station, walk 14 blocks and check into my new hotel. There still are no English speakers anywhere. I walk into a tourist office and ask, “¿Mappe?” They pull out a map. Then I ask, “¿Donde para cuarto para uno persona?” Then I write a price range in pesos on the map according to my judgement of the appropriate price range for the city. The person just jabbers up a storm in Spanish which I can´t follow, but he/she makes marks on the map, looks in the book which lists prices, and writes the price beside the dmark. That´s really all the help I need.

As my guidebook says, the star system is meaningless here in Argentina. Both last night and tonight I am staying in hotels that were listed as 3-star. The one last night was nice—good bed, TV, refrigerator, air conditioning, etc. The one tonight is simple with no TV even and a rather lumpy bed and probably shouldn´t even judtify ONE star. It is only for tonight, however.

I am nursing two sore spots. I walked down the stairs at the hotel last night. At the bottom, there is one more step down into a door well that is lower than the lobby floor. The doorwell flor is dark brown and the lobby floor is white. It didn´t really look like another step down, so I missed it and tumbled across the lobby bumping my hip on the floor. Then on the way to the hotel this morning, my suitcase caught on two broken tiles on the sidewalk and the handle pulled out of my hand. As it feel to the sidewalk, the handle scraped against my ankle taking off a bit of a thin layer of skin.

I think the man who sold me my bus ticket this morning may be cheating the company. He told me “3 pesos” which is what my guidebook said it would cost. But my ticket looked as if it were a student´s ticket and showed itself to be worth 2.40 pesos. He may be earning himself an extra 60 centavos for each ticket he sells that way. Of course, I couldn´t ask for a bus company official to let him know about it, since no one speaks English!

I have walked for 1 ½ hours looking for a place to eat. People must eat at home here. I found quite a few take-out places. The only eating places were either pizza places (selling pizzas that are too big) and a couple of dirty looking places. I finally headed back toward the bus station and found a place near there. It is the kind of place with food prepared and on display on a hot table. I always worry about the food being there too long without enough heat. But I was hungry and tired. I had milanesa. Like milanesa anywhere, it was a battered and fried slice of steak. Here, it had a thick tomato sauce on top of it, then thin slices of ham, then cheese, then slices of tomatoe and finally an olive. So it was a bit like having pizza with a milanesa crust! It was served with fried potato chips and very nice rolls fresh out of the oven—crusty on the outside with heavy, yeasty dough inside. By the way, confirming my eat-at-home theory was a steady stream of customers coming into the restaurant to buy food to go.