After Buenos Aires, we took a 10 hour overnight bus into the Northern Central part of Argentina to the city of Córdoba (700 km northeast of BA). It’s amazing how much the temperature can change after a bus ride: we left BA in 20 degrees heat and it was 34 degrees the next day in Córdoba. The city itself is quite nice. It has a lot of old buildings providing character and history, but it also has 7 universities giving it a young vibe and also plenty of modern shops. It has a population of 1.5 million but it feels quite compact and has a fully pedestrian zone in the centre making it easy to stroll around. However, we were all citied out at this stage so after just one night we made tracks again and headed to a small town called La Cumbre, 2 hours away into the nearby Central Sierra mountains.
La Cumbre was exactly what we were looking for....a very quiet little country town with scenic views, a number of activities to keep us busy during the day, and a selection of restaurants/bars to pass the time at night. It is an extremely tidy place and all the buildings are very well maintained. It has its own Christ the Redeemer statue on one of the hills overlooking the town - very similar to the one in Rio de Janeiro only a lot smaller and the view is not as impressive. Still makes for a nice hike though :) Another day we rented bikes and cycled all over the place, including up to a nearby “Estancia” (that’s basically an Argentinean 
ranch) where they make and sell their own brand of foods including jams, chocolates and dulce de leche (Argentinean milk caramel which they eat with everything!) We got a tour of the place which was quite funny: at the beginning it was established fairly quickly that we had no Spanish and the guide had no English, but he still proceeded to talk in detail to us about all the different aspects of the production processes and operation!
La Cumbre actually has a bit of a name for itself on the Paragliding scene – it hosted the Paragliding World Cup in 1994. We had hoped to do a tandem paraglide but unfortunately being a mountainous town in the spring, the weather was quite changeable and we never had the opportunity :(
The above photo is our hostel :)
So instead we went for a tour of the nearby village of Capilla del Monte and surrounding countryside. It was quite nice but is most famous for its numerous encounters with UFOs (they even have a UFO information centre in the town). Some of the recorded incidents include:
- In 1935, a local reported seeing a strange being dressed in a tight fitting suit while he was out walking on a country road.
- In 1986, two other locals saw a “spaceship” so big that its lights illuminated the surrounding countryside. The next day a burn mark measuring 122m by 64m was found at the point where it reportedly landed.
- A couple of years later, 300 people witnessed another “ship”, which left a burn mark 42m in diameter.
- In 1991, another burn mark was found. This one measured 12m in diameter with a temperature of 340 degrees C. Geologists were called in and they claimed that nearby rocks had recently been heated to a temperature of 3000 degrees C.
Unfortunately we didn’t witness any such excitement :( Or maybe fortunately!
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