Cordoba April 7 - April 10

Cordoba has 7 universities and a whole bunch of students! So you can imagine the chaos after dark...Grahamstown x 10...its a big city! You would think this inspired the Mavrix to go out on the town and party it up with the locals.... the truth is the Mavrix were both a little tired of going to bad clubs and drinking till the little hours of the morning. We both longed for the good old days of having the privacy of our own house, at this stage the hostel living was becoming very chaotic, but this didn´t dampen the Mavrix spirits. The big M went out on a football ´boys night,´while Vix stayed at the hostel drinking the vino tino and playing pool with her newly found Aussie and Isreali friends. (Lucky for her she didn´t have to dance on a pole outside a metal club.) The football was fun, actually it should be said that the bus drive to the football was fun, singing football songs in the middle of a crowded bus with a bunch of football hooligans is actually pretty damn awesome!! Besides big M having his favourite hat stolen by a young local boy pretending to be his friend, the group didn´t even manage to get into the stadium, damn gringos!
The next day we headed to some little town boasting La Seite Cascadas (7 Cascades for all the gringos in the crowd). We were hoping to do a big trek, use a panga to get through dense jungle and finally discover this beautiful untouched waterfall in the middle of nowhere. The truth of the matter though was that we did a 1 hour hike through the towns suburban tarred roads before walking right into the waterfall/cascades flanked by a tourist kiosks selling trinkets and t-shirts; ¨I went to the Seite Cascades and all I got was this lousy market!¨ . But we made the best of it and had some dulce de leche ice cream while sunning ourselves next to the water.....and a dustbin.

After another night of Vino Tinto ala cheapo we made our way to Alta Gracia to do some mountain biking with the usual united nations of travelers i.e. 2 ozzies, a flying dutchman and the token south africans. After disappointingly not finding a tandem to ride, the Mavrix put takkie to pedal and headed into some extremely beautiful and quaint scenery surrounding Alta Gracia. This day however was not going to be all strawberries, cream and downhills.... we got lost ....A LOT....in Alta Gracia, street signs, she´s not beeg. We also managed to break the M´s bike before some advanced bush mechanic work sorted it out. The bush mechanics were called in for a second round a little later when the ozzie flattened his tyre but luckly not his spirits. Our staple diet of crackers and sausage was enjoyed next to a tranquil babbling brook and helped give us the energy needed for the uphills that remained.

Finally we returned to Alta Gracia very happy with ourselves, very sunburnt (especially the flying dutchman) and made tracks for the obligatory travelers sundowning draft, 5 Quilmes por favor!

We overnighted into Rosario that night and arrived at 05h30. Stumbling into our hostel we were given a bean bag and a hard wood floor to sleep on between the 2 of us as check in wasnt till 2pm. They then tried to charge us 15 pesos each because we arrived early. The Mavrix were having none of this, so we told them where they could stick it in our best Spanglish (some hand gestures might have been used) and walked to the next hostel. Here we were immediately given a bed each and the offer of breakfast...What a difference a couple blocks make!!

We discovered that Rosario is a beautiful and peaceful town that gives out good vibes all day, pity there is bloody well nothing to do! After you walk along the river for a while and sit in the inumerable parks you kind of go...¨hmmm what now?¨. Even though this is the birthplace of Che Guevara a visit to his house is rather unspectacular...its now a pharmacy with a small flag outside saying the equivalent of ¨Che was here!¨. All this being said, we had a great time relaxing next to the river in Rosario, its the type of place we could settle down in... small, tranquil, beautiful and a decent size too.

The next day we would head off to the BIG Buenos Aires!