Cordoba, BA, Pinamar and Home

We arrived in Cordoba to a deluge of rain and found our hotel (following a minor arguement over fitting the kitebag in a taxi). We spent the next 4 days flitting between shopping, milling around and eating. My mum and nan were in Cordoba so it was a good chance to check out some nice restaurants and a chance to learn some useful family history regarding the haunts of my grandparents.

We made a trip to Alta Gracia and the teenage home of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. His old house is a little museum which had some interesting information and good photos. We did have some minor stress as the bus station was quite far from the centre of town and the museum. Sarah did not believe I could find our way back to the house (we did).

Sarah had her heart set on Paragliding which was supposed to be very good in a village 80k from the city centre. We borrowed a car from a family friend and set off with mum and nan in tow. We drove past Dique San Roque, which I remembered from my childhood, on our way to La Cumbre. The final destination was a nice town in which we had lunch and had its own Christ the Redeemer statue. We tried to get to the paragliding spot but had to abort about 10k in as the route probably required something more rugged than a citroen c3. On our way back we stopped at a paragliding school to discover that the 20knot winds pretty much excluded any chance of paragliding.

The drive back gave me a chance to experience rush hour traffic in a city well kwnown for its driving 'standards'. There were one or two close moments and the obligatory wrong turn as my mum tried to relay directions from our friend via mobile.

Our coach journey back to BA was not entirely uneventful. It took us right through the heartland of the farmers strike. After 14 hours and 3 long stops (I was contemplating stealing a motorbike) we made it back to BA at 2am. The remise journey from Retiro bus station might as well involved a submarine as the rain was bouncing 3ft off the road and several trees had blown over.

In BA we went down to the coast and had yet more meals. I went kitesurfing in the river at Peru Beach and had a pretty good session. Sarah remained unconvinced about the water quality (as of May '08 I'm still not blind!) . We did some more shopping and I started my dental work extravaganza.

It was discovered that a dentist was a) easier to find and b) cheaper than the UK. So I booked myself in and had an exam and clean... unfortunately I needed 6 fillings... just goes to show that 7 years without a dentist is probably a bad idea.

We decided to head to the beach and try and get some kitesurfing. It turned out the wind would probably be better in Argentina than in Uruguay so we booked a bus to Pinamar. I had been to the resort as a child and I think it was definately changed. There was a massive beach and we managed to get a session in on the first day! Unfortunately that was pretty much it for useable wind. We tried to get to Punta Rasa which was further north but the car rental place was closed. We did manage to rent bikes and ride to Carilo which was really really nice. Massive houses set in dunes with pine trees. The walk back along the beach allowed Sarah to see if the bike was waterproof as she got caught in the wash.

The flat we stayed in was nice and had a TV and kitchen etc.. lucky really as the resort was pretty much closed out of season. Finding a resurant was more luck than judgement. We did have some nice meals at the weekends. There were some fishermen that stopped on the beach each day to gut the fish they had caught. We bought two corvinos (like a bass) and cooked them up at home awesome meal for about 2 pounds.

Getting back to BA on the coach we stopped just outside my nans flat, which was nice. For the last 3 days we ate some more and shopped & I had my 6 fillings in 2 days woohoo!

Our journey back to the UK was fun....we were worried that we would have a short changeover in Sau Paulo but I think the flight times were changed as we had over an hour. The relief at this part of the journey was contradicted by the arival at Madrid. We had to transfer to the massive new terminal 4. It was more like a shopping centre, this turned out to be a good thing as our flight was delayed 3 hours. We go onto our plane and then after a half hour wait we were told to get off as the lane had a technical fault. After some milling and some more food we were loaded onto another aircraft. Again we had to wait as we had lost our landing slot at heathrow. We did eventually get to heathrow. Here we were greeted by an enourmous queue at immigration...it was fun... but at least our luggage was ready (and amazingly present) when we got through to baggage reclaim. The tube journey back to Holloway was enough for us to realise that London wasn't really the place we wanted to be. Oh well.. Norway beckoned!!