Adventures in La Cumbre, part I

much has passed.

This past weekend, I went to Córdoba. its about a 9-12 hour busride (depending on traffic), which we rode in a cama bus overnight (which basically means that the seats recline almost the whole way, and they give you pillows and blankets. totally first-class) to a pueblito outside of Cordoba called "la cumbre" for a two-day escape from the city. We arrived at about 9am, found the hostel--which in reality was a massive hacienda-lookalike close to downtown, where we were about the only people staying there. We decided to go on a hike while we waited for the others to arrive, and the lady in the tourism office recommended a 7-km hike around the outside of town over some hills to a dam. all we had to do was follow the creek, which sounded easy enough, so we took off. 

After a while, once we had left the borders of the city,  the path began to wander a bit, with some places being fairly clear, and in other parts, absolutely nothing. we stumbled our way through a beautiful forest, occasionally retracing our steps when we ended up on a dead-end. fording the river was a constant trek, and our only guide in many parts was seeing if the piles of donkey shit were still evident. 

the trail began to get steeper as we entered the hilly areas, and the path became less clear. there were fields of wheat with no path through them and we had to turn back more and more often. finally, we reached a point where the only possible way to continue appeared to be to scale up the side of a giant cliff. At the top there appeared to be a path sticking out of the mountain, but there was no guarantee that it actually led anywhere. Eric scaled up the side to see if the path actually went anywhere, while Sonia and I waited at the bottom to see if we could see another way around. Then, upon stepping back to take a picture of eric on top of the cliff, I noticed another man chilling on the side of the path. between a combination of my arm-waving and eric's shouting, we established that the path, was in fact, the only way to the dam. 

once we reached the top, another man came along, and offered to guide us to the top. he was a lawyer from buenos aires on a catholic men's retreat nearby, and said he knew the area well since he had gone there since he was a kid. we set off towards the top, feeling victorious.

A few minutes later, further along the path, we encountered a man scaling the cliff in a shorter place with his dog. how odd.

once we reached the dam, we thanked our guide, and began on the next treacherous part of our journey. we were somehow about 7km out of the city, and there weren't any buses or taxis anywhere near (as the lady in the tourist office had said there would be). we asked the only other people at the dam, but they said they were going the opposite way. fucked as we were, we started hiking back. then, suddenly, the others from the dam came barreling down the road in our direction, and motioned for us to jump in the back!

adventure satisfied, we returned back to the hostel, weary and aching. our other friends had arrived, and all of us went out to an asian fusion place. it was the first restaurant we'd found in Argentina with spicy food, and all of us went bonanza for it, followed up with a smorgasbord of custard, flan, chocolate volcano and other ridiculous desserts.

and thus concluded the first day of our  Córdoba adventure.