This past week we set out for a short trip and spent the week in Cordoba and two it surrounding towns.  We arrived on a 13 hour night train to Cordoba, which is Argentina's 2nd largest city.  It's located at the center of the county where the flat planes start to merge with the mountain ranges.  The region around Cordoba is very hilly and reminiscent to the Sierras of Nevada with dry brush and numerous lakes.



Being that it was the 25th of May during our trip to Cordoba (the equivalent to our July 4th), we had an obligatory serving of Locro, which is a traditional dish 5/25 (like turkey on Thanksgiving).  It's a dish that isn't on many restaurants normal menu but for the week leading up to May 25th, there were signs letting you know that you could get your fix here.  Apparently there is two type of locro, both are intended to warm you up as a fall meal.  One has a cream corn base and the other is more like a traditional stew, but they both include bits of beef on the bone.




While in Cordoba, we hit up three museums (Evita Fine Arts Museum, Caraffa Fine Arts Museum and the Museo de Ciencias Naturales) and stumbled across a really cool park that had the following permanent art installation. Built in 2010 (Argentina's 200th anniversary), each ring represents a year in Argentina's history.  The rings was imprinted with the year and a brief history of that year.  Following a sequential path from 1810 to 2010, the rings meandered through the entire park.


Our home base was the LINK Hostel in Cordoba but each day we jumped on a private transport to get us out to the smaller cities in the countryside.


The first city we visited was Villa General Belgrano, which is an odd touristy town because of its German connection.  As the story was told to us, a WWII battleship full of German soldiers was cornered in the delta of the Rio del Plata.  With almost certain doom awaiting them in the Atlantic ocean and Germany not doing to well at home, a decision was made to sink their ship and march inland.  The occupants included many professionals such as an engineer, doctor, etc. The perfect set of people to start a town.  They founded the town of Villa General Belgrano (and from the story we heard was forced to change its name to General Belgrano, an Argentinian hero, because of a spat with the government of Argentina). If any (or all) of that story is untrue, don't whine to me.  That's why I prefaced it with "as it was told to me", and truely I'm sure the true story isn't as fun. Today the city embraces its central European roots and resembles any number of German cities.

Our second city we visited, Villa Carlos Paz, doesn't have such a colorful past but is a popular vacation destination among Argentinians because of its large lake.  We enjoyed the really nice running/walking path along the south side of it.  We lucked into a great ice cream company, Grido Helado, which apparently is a popular ice cream stand because it has a ton of locations through all three of the cities we visited.