Following on from our very enjoyable time in B.A, we headed to a city further North called Cordoba. It's a big university city, with quite a lot of culture (although obviously we gave that a miss) and excursions to neighbouring regions. We spent a day in nearby Alta Gracia, visiting Che Guevara's old family home (so maybe a little bit of culture) and seeing a few old Jesuit monuments (although none of us are any the wiser as to who the Jesuits actually are). But very proud of ourselves for actually managing to navigate ourselves there and back virtually problem-free! We stayed in a cool little hostel with a lot of travellers, so it had a really nice atmosphere. Met more Israelis, of course. Our main other day trip whilst in Cordoba was a day spent horse trekking through the (very beautiful) mountains with a local family-run company who own a number of horses. It was a fantastic day all round, with two really lovely Argentinian brothers guiding us on a 3 hour trek, in which Dan succesfully managed to negotiate a horse that only managed to turn left, followed by yet another huge Argentinian steak BBQ, and then an afternoon of chilling plus attempting a couple of zip wires over the stream which the family were adamant we should try, and yet failed to get any of us to fall in as they had hoped.
From Cordoba we then journeyed further North, to the capital city of the region of Salta. Again, this is a city surrounded by stunning countryside and mountains, yet it has a slightly more rustic feel than Cordoba. There are also a lot more tourists here, with travel agencies on every corner offering excursions/day trips to the nearby provinces. Unfortunately, our hostel has less young travellers in it than any of our previous ones, but this hasn't hindered our time here. We had one of our favourite days of the trip so far here...a day spent a couple of hours from the city centre on a river rafting trip. Set in the most beautiful landscape, we spent a couple of hours on the river, negotiating rapids with the help of our guide Gustavo (and his dog, who took a particular liking to Josh and managed to get in the way of almost everyone and our paddling). After a really great time on the water, getting absolutely drenched, there was, of course, yet another BBQ to enjoy. The afternoon was spent doing Canopy - four long zip wires, approx 600m each, criss-crossing across the valley over the river. Having trekked up the hillside for a good 20 minutes, we realised that this was perhaps not going to be as easy as originally thought...the height seemed slightly ridiculous, and there were definitely some nerves flying around. But once we did the first zip wire (they all got lower from there), we realised it was incredibly good fun, and absolutely loved it. Even Josh, who somehow managed to get 3 out of the 4 completely wrong, resulting in him either spinning the whole way along having taken his hand off the wire, or almost crashing into the side of the mountain as he didn't quite stop himself in time.
Markets, eating in a courtyard at a great, authentic local restaurant, of course another Arsenal match for the boys, more cocktail drinking and bar hopping has filled the majority of the rest of our time here (we even managed to step foot inside a museum, watch the introductory video and then decide to leave without walking around it). We spent today in a nearby town called San Lorenzo sunbathing on rocks in a stream and enjoying the amazing weather. In a couple of hours we are getting yet another night bus, which will take us to the Bolivian border, from where we plan on getting a train to a southern Bolivian town for a couple of days, followed by a trip to Uyuni, where we plan on meeting a few of our friends (fellow ex-Nottingham students...we're branching out!) in order to do the infamous salt flats. Next installment...Bolivia!
