Alta Gracia

Yesterday I took another little trip to the sierras with Brooke and a friend of hers, Guille. This time we knew where we were going, and exactly what we wanted to do. :) We took another little bus to a town called Alta Gracia. The trip on the bus was warm adn beautiful, and we spent it drinking mate, and in good conversation. When we got to Alta Gracia we wondered along the little river that ran through town, and through the hilly streets lined with cute houses. The place was big enough to be an actual place, but small enough so that it was well maintained, the streets clean, and lots of beautiful trees planted everywhere. The houses all had beautiful gardens with colorful flowers in them too. the air was calm, and it felt wonderful to be out of the loud, smelly, dirty streets of Cordoba.
Those of you who know a bit about Che might know that he had quite a problem with asthma. Well, when che was justa baby he was brought to Alta Gracia to live till he was 17 years old, because of the dry climate, and fresh air of the place. Today, the house where he had lived has become a museum about him, and about that time in his life too, and that is exactly where we went. I had no clue that this place existed, that he had lived so close, in fact, later I found out that he had lived in Cordoba too! He left from there on one of his many trips across latin America. The museum was really cool. The house was an old cement block, typical argentinean villa, with tile floors, and a large porch out front. Each room was different parts of his life with photos, letters, and artifacts from the time. For example, they had the original bike that he traveled through Argentina with. They also had a motorcycle that was the exact same model and from the exact same time as "la poderosa II." All in all the museum was very interesting, abnd I got lost in reading some of the letters he sent to his kids, they were interesting. I also read some of hids friends accounts on growing up with "Ernestito," and I had to smile when I read them becasue it reminded me little of my house. "There was never any real order in the house, poeple did as they pleased,... but everybody was content with what they did, and the house ran. People could always show up unanounced, and many timed it was more than just family around the dinner table." Oh, and here is something that I found out that made me laugh: che grew up playing golf. When I left the place, i looked at the huge pine trees in the front yard and wondered to myself how many times little che had climbed them.
We wondered back into town and went to go look at the old jesuit church and "estancia." It was a really cool old building, with a bunch of old furniture from a long long time ago. I think the coolest thing I saw was a water filter that they used back in the day which was this huge peice of soapstone that waes hollowed out on top over an even bigger clay pot! They put water in the soap stone and it would slowly drip through the stone clean and into the big clay pot ready to use! Aftter that we took a seat in park at the center of town adn watched the ducks on the little lake as we drnak terere and ate pastaries. When it got dark, we headed back to the bus station and went home. it was quite a nice day, and it was lucky that we hadent gone one day earlier, because it had rained and rained and rained.
I am off to my foklore class now, my last one! I will try to upload pictures of the trip tomorrow.
chau!