Avoiding the city!

From San Juan we travelled up to the city of Cordoba but only stayed one night before taking a short bus ride out to the village of La Cumbre. Quickly checked into a hostal before heading out to explore the town (Which was small, quaint, quite arty and generally very nice!) and going for an afternoon walk into the hills secretly hoping to find some paragliders, as its meant to be a bit of a mecca for it here, and convinced to have a go! So with yet another dog that had adopted us for the day we set off for around 3 hours without a sign of any paragliders flying through the air – oh well it was a lovely walk anyway, suppose we should get the dog back! The problem with having one dog follow you is that it attracts others. At one point after a small fight we had around 8 of them just walking down the road with us! Got back to town after around 5 hours walking and sat at a bar for a drink, still with the dog – he later followed us into the supermarket before promptly doing his business in the middle of the freezer isle! The next day we had a spiritual moment and trekked into the hills to see the Christ statue that overlooks town, at the foot of the statue was a small shrine where people had left notes, photos, objects etc – a little weird if you ask me but kinda nice at the same time I guess! Had to negotiate a field full of rather skittish wild horses on the way back to town – where´s that dog when you need him!? From La Cumbre we headed to the even smaller town of Tanti, if La Cumbre was laid back then this place was almost comatose! Chilled out cafes and bars, people riding their horses to the shops and our peace loving, guitar playing, space cake eating, dreadlocked hostal owners – this was a proper little piece of chilled out Argentina. Before it became too difficult to leave we headed out of Tanti the following day going back via Cordoba and catching some of the 25th May celebrations including 100 gauchos parading on horse back, a classical concert and a bizarre fountains to music display. We then jumped on a bus to Alta Gracia, a town famed for being the childhood home of Che Guevara. His family home has been turned into a museum so being that most of South America is covered with his face we though it only right we checked out the Marxist propaganda and learn some more about him – viva la revolucion and all that! Whilst in town we also had a little wander around an old estancia building which was very pleasant.