argentina: alta gracia

breakfast was not included in our hostel price, we ended up eating at a cafe on a platz...we found the small bus station in cordoba from where we could take a bus to the city of alta gracia...alta gracia is on the unesco world heritage list, as it has one of the jesuit estancias that were so important in argentinean history...alta gracia is perhaps more famous as the city in which che guevara spent many years of his childhood...
our bus dropped us off at the bus station, we stopped into the information office to pick up a map and figure out where to go...it turns out there are a bunch of museums in the city, though we weren't interested in most of them...

we decided to find che's house first...on our way there, we walked through a park, and passed a churro truck...YUM...there is nothing better than fresh made churros...full of grease and sugar, there is nothing better...that being said, both bo and i weren't feeling so good by the time we finished eating...
the park was called the parque of the americas...we saw flags for a number of the countries in south america, but nothing from north america...we both climbed on that statue for a picture...
we found che's house...then we found another house...and finally we found a third house in which he lived...guess what, they were all on the same street; i don't know what prompted the family to move so much on the same street...one of the houses has been turned into the che museum, the other two aren't even marked...i only noticed them because i knew the addresses at which he lived...needless to say, che's life was never stable, though his family was always close...

che was actually born in rosario, but his family moved to alta gracia because he had really bad asthma...alta gracia is at a higher altitude, and the air is dryer...
the entry fee to the museum was expensive (75 pesos!)...i hope they use that money in a good way, but i don't know...the house is small, but well curated...each room has photos and letters and information signs about different aspects of che's life...there are a couple maps showing the routes of his motorcycle trips through south america...some of the information has been translated intp english, most is only in spanish...

from che's house we walked to a lake in the city centre, it's a man made lake which has been surrounded by a concrete boardwalk of sorts...on one side of the lake (which is really small) was the second sight we wanted to see, the jesuit estancia...
unfortunately, the church in this estancia was not open, we weren't able to find out why...booo...as we were exploring the rest of the estancia (which had good displays about how life was back in the day, as well as the family that had lived in this estancia) bo managed to set off a motion detector...hee hee...

after walking through every open room we could find, we exited the estancia and bought two bags of salty popcorn, yahooo!!!
it was easy to find our way back to a bus stop to catch a bus back to cordoba...