to Salta

It was a long day traveling - off and into an Uber in Córdoba at 6.30 a.m., and arrived in Salta, in the north west, just about an hour before sunset.  Argentina is a huge country - but everything passes through Buenos Aires, unless one's driving, or taking (very) long-distance buses, so I'm feeling that I'm getting to know the airports - especially the Aeroparque - well.  Arriving into Salta was wonderful, with a backdrop of the high Andes, and then (after another Uber - a godsend here) a stunning hotel: my room is called La Escritora, and not just any old writer, but Juana Manuela Gorriti, a very radical nineteenth century writer who composed in a number of genres; lived in Peru and for a while was married to the president of Bolivia; and was very much a feminist, arguing for women to be integrated into intellectual, literary and political life; she wrote novels and short stories - oh, and she came from Salta, indeed.  Clearly this is the hotel room I've always been meant to have, with a bathroom decorated especially for me.

One thing I came here knowing something about, and want to learn more, are the ongoing protests against lithium mining in the region.

Here's the cathedral, by dusk

and by night;

here the rather stunning Basilica Menor y Convento San Francisco.

This was nearing the southern end, really, of the Spanish invasion (though obviously they pushed on south to Cordoba and beyond) so the streets have far more of a feel of a genuinely Latin American country, and things are more chaotic - many motor-bikes - it reminds me very faintly of Arequipa, in Peru.  More tomorrow!

 

pleasantly and unpleasantly Germanic

A trip into the Sierras today - first past a very, very large reservoir, and then to a mountain village, La Cumbrecita, which is pedestrian (and evidently equine) only, and was founded as a commune in 1934, and then grew at the hands of German and Austrian immigrants in the late 1930s: wonderfully peaceful; keen on ecotourism and eco-everything; and the kind of place where one could easily imagine holing up and writing - until one starts to think: why not, actually, go to Switzerland or Bavaria or Austria?  - the only plausible reason being that my Spanish is a good deal better than my German; although part of today was also, confusingly, spent talking French to a couple on the same tiny tour.  So why did you choose to come to Córdoba, I asked (for it's not an entirely obvious destination).  Well, I had a solar return chart done to see where I should spend my birthday, said the woman, and ...

It even had its own little Alpine chapel up in the pine trees.

One could easily be anywhere in early winter in sub-Alpine Europe ...

Pan-global kitsch;

and very specifically Argentine kitsch;

and a cafe-restaurant where I had some cheese for lunch that happily was, in fact, more New Mexican than Alpine.

But by contrast, Villa General Belgrano.  This was a Germanic Aryan nightmare.  It was founded by 130 survivors from the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that was sunk - I think by the sailors themselves? - in the Battle of the Rio Plato in 1940, and they must have hoofed it until they arrived here - and settled where some German speculators had already been building a base since 1930.  To say that it has a different feel from La Cumbrecita is an understatement.  It's built around breweries and beergartens and an annual Oktoberfest - not that there's anything wrong with that - but it's also constructed around a certain version of German-ness - and apparently Nazi visitors and sentiments still are found here, even if this counts as hate speech under Argentinian law.

There are certainly some picturesque corners,

but basically I couldn't wait to get out of the place.

 

Córdoba, day 2

Another view of the cathedral, this time with a pigeon (mostly, the air is alive with screeching parakeets).

The monastery of St Teresa was absolutely lovely - especially the little cloister, full of orange trees.  There's still a very reclusive Carmelite nunnery attached, apparently.

The building houses a collection of religious art, some of it fine examples of nineteenth century kitsch;

but with some good carved and polychrome statues, and a handful of Peruvian paintings, like this lovely image of St Teresa herself, and her younger brother, running away as a child so that they could go and be martyrs to the Moors (very Dorothea-like).

The very mention of Moors made me think rather emphatically how much more magnificent Córdoba in Spain is ...

Then a walk to see - well, it's a bit like Westminster Cathedral redux, but from 1900-ish.  There was no way of getting inside ...

and it looks to have needed a lot of holding up - these are very belabored workmen.

Indeed, one of the challenges with very non-touristy Córdoba is not being able to get to see things that one would like to - a grand hall and a chapel in the University would be prime examples, instead of which I found myself only able to enter things like the library reading room, which looked like ... a library reading room.  Instead of which, things like this early C20th chapel (more Italian frescoes) which is somehow mangled up with a shopping center and art gallery were open, but ...

However, the Museo de Bellas Artes was definitely open, with a mostly dreadful exhibition of art by contemporary artists from Córdoba, and some much more haunting works commemorating, memorializing the Disappeared.  Some 20,000 people passed through the detention center here in the center of the city between 1971-1983, during the military dictatorship (the building is now its own museum), and even the few rooms of art works here in the MBA were incredibly depressing, and so redolent of - well, my own generation.  And they are a warning.

My guidebook cheerfully claimed that there were examples of nineteenth century art in this museum, but I could only find one work hanging - unless one counts the planning of the house itself, which is a monument to very late C19th taste if one were very rich and powerful, by Córdoban standards, at least.  El Palacio Garzón was designed for the Garzón family by Emilio Caraffa - the same artist who supervised the frescos in the cathedral - and here he was responsible for the huge lunette on the ceiling of the main room, Sueño Veneciano, which depicts the Garzón family being transported through the Venice lagoon by a pair of horses - it is genuinely one of the most terrible pieces of symbolist art I've ever encountered, and that's saying something.  I think the rest of the C19th art collection is in storage, and I wasn't tempted to ask to visit it.

Preferable by far were the Art Nouveau tiles in the entrance passage, 

and the wrought-iron gates outside, ordered from the French firm Durenne's catalogue.

 

Córdoba

This is not a diary: if it were, it'd have the way before dawn start in freezing temperatures; the adventure of buying gas (they pump it for you!); the car rental return (you have to get a parking ticket to enter the airport, seemingly); the excitement of wondering whether I'd make my connection, after Aerolíneas Argentinas decided it would be fun to have the connecting flight to Córdoba leave not from the airport it was originally scheduled to depart from, but the one the other side of the city ... good job it's the 25th May, the anniversary of the formation of the revolutionary government (independence proper from Spain happened in 1816), and so Buenos Aires was atypically traffic-free.  But there's a lot of old Spain left in Córdoba - an old Jesuit center - and that was a big part of my wanting to see what, so far, is a rather charming city, even if the light was fading by the time I'd checked in and could head out to explore.

Here's the cathedral: built in the C18th, and the Baroque ceiling decorations ... done by Italian artists in the early C20th.

I think this is the Monasteria de Santa Teresa, but I'd want to check on that ... So much to see tomorrow!

The city is known for its honey.

... and this is the view from my hotel roof: an empty city, because everyone's at home eating or having eaten locro - a potato and corn and sausage stew that's typical criollo food, and what everyone (bar me - none came my way at airports) eats today ...

 

more lakes

Today - a long day - I was picked up way before dawn (mind you, dawn isn't until 8 50 or so, Bariloche being so far south), and then headed north to San Martin de los Andes, a really lovely little town, via the Seven Lakes.  There are, of course, a while lot more than seven, and I felt very sorry for the tiny ones, as big (or as small) as Queenmere on Wimbledon Common, which clearly don't count at all.  And then there were plenty of autumnal landscapes looking like Millais paintings.

I learned a surprising amount about lakes today: the ones that rivers flow into; the ones that flow into each other; the ones that are self contained.

Small patches of autumn;

and larger ones (again, one could be forgiven for thinking one were in Scotland).

This was my favorite: Lago Falkner (Tomas Falkner seems to have been a fascinating man: born in Liverpool in 1702 and died in Shropshire in 1784; was initially a Calvinist but studies medicine in Cordoba; became a Jesuit missionary in Patagonia; managed not to get massacred; and went back to Cordoba to teach mathematics for 11 years; was a competent botanist; went to Cadiz, Italy, and back to England where he wrote a Description of Patagonia).  We weren't actually told this: Wikipedia was hastily consulted just now ...

This is a young Chimango hawk.

more autumn;

and sometimes, you're just very thankful you opted to go on a minibus tour, so that someone else could do all the driving and you could look at the views, and not be worrying about obstacles in the road (at another point, there were a lot of sheep).