Cordoba sits between Mendoza and Buenos Aires (closer to Mendoza—maybe an 8 hour car trip, or an hour and a half flight). My recommendation to travelers: if you have to take the bus make sure you get the “Express”, not the “milk run.” Suffice to say, 12 hours later, we landed in Cordoba, from Mendoza. Fortunately the Amerian Hotel (you can buy very reasonably online) is first class, a good recoup, and right downtown in Cordoba, close to museums, theaters, and shopping. It’s a perfect locale to people-watch—all the gorgeous young men and women who look like they just walked off a film shoot! The average age must be 35.
Our Laguna Larga friends
We used the time there, day one, to visit our Argentine Fulbright friends, and get out to Laguna Larga with Raquel and Jorge to lunch (Facundo’s asado is right up there with Smokin’ Joe’s) and visit with their families. John also got to meet Stella and Juan’s family and gifted some jazz great CDs before they carried us to the airport. A great way to see sights is to have local contacts. It seems everyone we know who has come to South America, has contacts here that need to be maintained.
Inglesia Catedral
We were in South America during the end of a 4-day weekend—Carnival, of course! Nothing like Rio De Janeiro, but still holiday, and no one was working. On Wednesday, everyone went back to work, so we wandered the streets of this colonial city, replete with cathedrals built in the 1500’s and unmarked by earthquakes.
During my first visit to Argentina, I remember the women walking the central plaza in Buenos Aires, mothers and then, grandmothers of the “desaparacidos” (disappeared ones).
In Cordoba, this time, we happened onto two “exhibits”, if you will, that are not mentioned in any tourist guide, but mark a very dark period in recent Argentine history. When I was in my 20’s, trying to figure out my life plan, so were many young Argentineans’. Those young people had the misfortune of growing up in a country where a military dictatorship removed these people, their partners, and children, from their homes, families, and universities with impunity. They were locked up, tortured, and “disappeared”, with no consequences for the perpetrators. 
The Argentine government is slowly uncovering the details, as well as the names and families of those affected.
Our first “huh, what is this?” occurred as we came out of the gorgeous, golden, Ingelsia Catedral, in the heart of Cordoba. We stumbled on a street labeled “Museo de la Memoria”. Along this narrow alley, next to the most auspicious cathedral in the city, was the jail where, beginning 1976, young “dissidents” were held without trial or recourse, tortured, raped and killed. It was a chilling reminder of what can happen without democratic process. John and I remarked how similar it seemed to the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia during that very same time.
Then, we wandered up the museum district, and after lunch, visited the Ferrerya Palace, where Carlos Alonso’s works about the same epoch were on display. Only artists can document so well the best and the worst of humanity. If you want to read more:
Reporting from Patagonia tomorrow (or the next day).
Teresa Van Haalen Ventures 