Our last weeks in Argentina

Mendoza
At first we think we have hit gold with this hostel . It is cheap and it seems cheerful and quiet . We soon find out how wrong we are with these assumptions. We share our room with three blond girls from Sweden . One night when we come back from dinner we find some white powder on the table and on my jacket which I had put over the chair next to the table . It is not difficult to see what happened . The girls sniffed some coke and not feeling worried about the fact that cocaine is illegal in Argentina and that they are sharing a room they brushed the leftover carelessly from the table over my jacket . After cleaning the jacket we retire to bed . About two in the morning the girls come back . It looks like they are drunk . They put on all the lights in the room and start talking to each other unaware that we are there . One of the girls asks the other two if they are not worried that we may find out about them using cocaine . The other two start to laugh and say that we do not look like the kind of people who would recognise it for what it is ( I am sure some of my old friends may find this quite funny ) . Anyway not being able to sleep my mind starts to work things over . I think these are the kind of girls who would take a package from a stranger and bring it on a plane . It would not surprise me if one day I would open a newspaper and see a picture of them with a caption saying something like ¨caught drugtrafficking¨. Apparently there are some politicians in Holland who want to lock up drug courriers in cages placed in the arrivals hall of the airports for everyone to see . I can picture these girls in one of those cages . But my brains , probably in an effort to get revenge for spilling the coke over my stuff, pictures the girls in a giant hamster cage where they have to run the giant hamster wheels to the amusement of the travellers .

Difunta Correa Easter sunday
During the civil war in the 1840s when general Rosas was in power a woman called Deolinda Correa followed her husbands battalion through the San Juan desert with their infant son . She only carried little supplies and eventually she ran out of water and food . Desperately she tried to reach her husbands battalion but the desert proved a cruel place and the woman died of thirst . A day later her body was found . She was holding the baby in her arms . The child was still nursing from her breast .
Thus a saint was born . Although the church has never acknowledged her the shrine which was build on the place where she died all those years ago attracks many pilgrims from Argentina and Chile . We have made the trip to the Difunat Correa shrine on easter sunday . This day sees the most pilgrims , who come here to bring gifts and ask for favours and blessings . There are seventeen capels which display the gifts people have brought . One chapel stores dozens and dozens of wedding dresses . Gifts from women who want to thank the saint for finding a husband . Another chapel is full with sport trophies . There are a few chapels which display pictures from the devotees . There is one picture which deserves mentioning . Three photos are tied together by a black coloured string . The first photo shows a baby obviously sick as there is a tube sticking up the childs nose . The second picture shows the same baby in a coffin . The third photo shows a different baby . Looking at the photos you can see that the first two are somewhat older than the third one . You can imagine that the parents must have prayed to Difunta after their first child died for another child and that finally their prayers got answered . There is one chapel which contains army uniforms and photos from soldiers who have made it back from whatever mission they were on . Many photos are from the eighties when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands .
The shrine itself is situated on top of a hill . We have to queu to see the shrine . Now and again we have to make room for a pilgrim who is crawling on hands and knees .

San Juan
I do not have much to say about this place as we did only stay here to catch up on sleep (and drink wine) .
The town is fairly new as the old town was destroyed in the fourties in a eartquake . In a way that disaster was the first step in Perrons rise to power as he made himself a pòpular figure raising money for the rebuild . During that time he also met his future wife Evita .

Cordoba and the road trip
Cordoba`s inner city is quite beautiful but we do not allow ourselves too much time to explore it . On our first morning in Cordaba we meet Chris and Helen , a couple from the UK we have met before in Ushuaia and the four of us decide to rent a car to explore the Central Sierras . What we do see though is the Iglesia Compania de Jesus which ceiling resembles an inverted ships hull and the Crypta Jesuitica which now exposes erotic pictures .
On our road trip our first stop is Alta Gracie . The young Ernesto Gueverra grew up here and there is a museum dedicated to his life . Roaming through this museum I realise that it was a good idea to read Lee Andersons biography on Gueverra before leaving Ireland as now I can correct some of the information plaques in the museum . For example the date on Ernesto Gueverra`s birth certificate shown in the museum is incorrect as the date was changed by a friendly doctor . Ernesto`s mother was pregnant before she married Ernesto`s father and to save face they asked the doctor to falsify the documents . As they were in the North of Argentina away from friends and family nobody noticed this scandalous detail . Funny to think that Che`s life started of with a lie .
Villa General Belgrano is our second stop . Walking through this town you feel like you are in the South of Germany . Survivors of the Graf Spee were stationed here in the WW2 . Ernesto Gueverra used to come here as a kid to spy on them . We spent the night in this place and then head to La Cumbrecita where we climb a mountain called Cerro Wank .
Our fourth stop is Mina Clavero from where we drive to the Parque Nacional Quebrada del Condorito . This is a beautiful wildlife park where you can see young condors which are learning to fly . We run into Jeff again . Jeff is an American guy who always seems to wear a Motorhead T shirt and he has pinguins tatoed on his arms and neck . He knows everything about birds . In fact you only have to describe a bird to him and he can name it . Near Mina Clavero there is a town called Rocsen which houses one of the strangest museums I have ever seen. Museum Rocsen displays basicly everything a museum can display . There are old cars and motorcycles , old clothes , paintings , African trible gear , fossils and minerals , religious curiosa , a butterfly collection , torture machinery , a Peruvian mummy and a shrunken head I cant stop gazing at . From Mina Clavero we drive to Estancia Santa Catalinsa which used to be run by Jesuits . The caretaker who shows us around tells us that he loves religious music . Mozart and the Clash . We stay our fourth and last night in Jesus Maria from where we head back to Cordoba .

After twenty hours of travelling we arrive in style in Puerto Iguazu as the steward serves champagne an hour or so before we arrive . We arrive at noon on sunday and laze the rest of the day away . Monday we go to see the Argentinian site of the waterfalls . To be honoust I dont think I am a good enough writer to describe this natural phenomenon . Near where the Rio Iguazu meets the Rio Parana there is a huge drop in the basaltic rock plateau . The river Iguazu is divided into many different channels and lakes before it reaches this drop . As a consequence there are many different waterfalls to admire . The biggest is the Garganta del Diablo . From afar you may think that the forest is on fire but when you come closer you can see that the waterfall is shrouded in a smokelike mist . When the sun shines you can see rainbows jumping up from the mist like mushrooms from the Autumn ground . And then there are the butterflies . They seem to be everywhere and when you walk around you are covered with them from your head to your toes . The waterfalls lie on the border of Argentina and Brazil . From the Argentinian site you can see all the individual waterfalls . From the Brazilian site you can see the entire falls in one panoramic view . We go to Brazil on tuesday . The view is definately worth the hassle getting there . According to the Guarani indians the falls were created by an enraged forest god . When the hero Caroba rescued a young maiden named Naipar from the house of the god who kept her prisoner he fled with her in a canoe over the Rio Iguazu . The god noticing that she had gone flew in a rage and followed the lovers along the river . He caught up with them and made the riverbed disappear . From the viewpoint you can imagine an enraged godly giant grabbing a huge chunk of the earth and tossing it away . Naipar plunged to her dead and turned into a rock . Caroba turned into a tree forever overlooking the river where his lover sank as a stone to the bottem .