We spent about 2 weeks travelling the width of Argentina, from Buenos Aires to Mendoza. Our first stop was in Rosario – the birthplace of the famous Che Guevara and a pleasant city with many plazas and a pretty waterfront. We wandered through the historic downtown and found Che’s original house. Unfortunately, that’s where the Che memorabilia ended and there were no museums or other monuments to him.
Unable to get a room for the night, we ended up moving onward via night bus to Cordoba, a University city with a historic downtown and a plethora of outdoor activities and shopping. Unfortunately, it was just too damn hot to do anything. The temperature hit around 38 degrees and after a couple of days of hiding in museums and treating sunburns, we decided to head to our next stop – San Juan.
We stayed in San Juan long enough to see the famous Valle de la Luna and a few other small sites. The Valle de la Luna is a large national park that resembles the surface of the moon and is often compared with Zion Canyon in the US. We spent a whole day wandering around the park seeing all the mysterious rock formations and fossils, including the ´Ball-court´ which is an area in the desert covered with perfectly round balls of rock. It’s a mystery how or why they are shaped that way.
We also took a quick stop by the Caves de Zonda, a champagne production that works out of a cave network outside San Juan. We bought a bottle and then took a nice day hike up the Indian Head Trail nearby for a lookout over the valley. It was a brief stay, but we were anxious to move on to Mendoza, our final Argentinian stop.
