Córdoba is the second largest city in Argentina and has apparently been named Cultural Capital of the Americas. However, for most of the time that I stayed in Córdoba I did not hang around in the city. After seeing far too many churches in one concentrated area, I headed to nearby towns in search of variety: Alta Gracia for some Che Guevara history, and to Villa Carlos Paz for promises of Vegas style fun.

In the centre of Córdoba is a square called Plaza San Martin, and in this general area are many many churches. Something else that I noticed during my stay here is that, if there is anything that there is more of than churches, it is queues – the like of which I have not seen since I was in Venezuela. The streets are filled with lines of people, all leading to banks, bus stops, ice cream parlous… you name it and you will find a queue leading to it. It looks like there are some great bands in town and everyone wants to go to their concerts.

Back to the churches… many of them were not much to look at from the outside, but some had very impressive/interesting interiors. One was even coated with rather fetching purple horizontal stripes that gave it a slight tartan effect. Two buildings that were nice on the outside were the Cathedral and Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón, which has a rather sinister presence in my opinion. Tired of churches, I paid a visit to Museo Evita del Bellas Artes. Here I saw various sculptures, paintings and drawings. I was not really keen on most of it, but of all the things I saw on four floors I quite liked three pieces. One day I'll have a house and can put up some pictures to decorate I am sure!

After a day of nothing but cultural activity I decided to buy myself a new book – this time it would be something in Spanish. I settled on Charlie y el gran ascensor de crystal for ages 12+. I never read this sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in English, so I thought I’d give it a go in Spanish. As soon as I sat down to start reading (dictionary to hand), I remembered that Roald Dahl often uses the most bizarre words/makes them up, and pretty much everything that Willy Wonka says it totally random! A few people in my hostel seemed quite impressed that I was managing to read it as most of them spoke no Spanish whatsoever. This was when I learnt that the staff at the hostel could actually speak English, but had continued to talk to me in Spanish – a clear result. The book is certainly stretching me, but I seem to be able to understand about 75% of it without having to reach out for my dictionary, which I am pretty pleased about… at least I think I am understanding it correctly :s That evening I watched (on TV) the Argentina v Germany football match and understod a fair bit of the commentary and pretty much everything that Maradonna said in his post-match interview. I'm getting there, but I definitely want to finally get some proper lessons when I get to Bolivia.

One huge icon all over the World, but especially in Argentina is the infamous Che Guevara... love him or hate him, you see his face everywhere, ironically he is just like McDonalds. I am not hugely knowledgeable on the guy and have not seen either the Motorcycle Diaries, or the more recent Che films. I did however read the Motorcycle Diaries on this trip, and until then I did not even know that he's Argentinean. I guess I've somehow managed to spend the last 26 years knowing barely anything about him, but recognising his face n the T-shirts/badges of others who probably know little, if any, more about him than I. Well, to put this right I took a little trip out to Alta Gracia which is about an hour from Córdoba and after asking around the leafy neighbourhood I found Che's old house. The house where he spent his adolescent years has been converted into a museum and is home to various exhibits from his younger years, and then those spent in Cuba. Evidently a very intelligent and determined man, I'm still not convinced I'd see him as a hero... but as always, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, right? Although the original La Poderosa broke and is not in the museum, they have gone to the trouble of installing one in exactly the same model for all the tourists to pose with, myself included of course.

The next day I found myself at a bit of a loose end about what to do next in/around Córdoba. This afterall is Argentina´s second largest city and the cultural capital of the Americas. None of the other hostel guests seemed to be up for much more than surfing the internet, watching TV and eating, so they provided no inspiration. I had been a little disappointed with my first choice of hostel as the guests were continually buried in their laptops, apart from the time when they were in the continual and obligatory Córdoba style queue for the bathroom. For this reason I decided to spend some time in the morning moving to another hostel in search of more atmosphere... just what you get when you're put in a six-bed dorm room with five guys! Yet still, no inspiration about what I should do that day, so i was left with the option that comes out in desperate times... the Lonely Planet; something I've not had to do in a long time. Amanda asked a while back why I refer to this particular publication as "the book of lies", well, here is an example of one its many, let's call them discrepancies:

"A little slice of Vegas in the Sierras, Carlos Villa Paz has everything you could hope for, and many things you didn't realise you were hoping for... fun parks galore and - the city's pride and joy - a two-story cuckoo clock..."

So, although I wasn't actually expecting anything quite as extravagant as Vegas, I was at least hoping for Blackpool. First up - a cuckoo clock that is the pride and joy of a town full of fun parks has to be something quite impressive, right? Wrong! Purely by luck rather than judgement I arrived at the cuckoo clock at 13.55, only five minutes until the clock struck on the hour to entertain the crowds. I could only see three doors on this clock, but was quite excited to see what would come out of each of them. I've not seen too many cuckoo clocks in my life, but whenever I do it is usually in a touristy environment and they are normally bigger than this one, which incidentally is located in the middle of a traffic island and could easily be missed if you did not know it was there.

I spent five minutes eagerly awaiting along with the other 6 people who had arrived before me. At 14.00 the door in the middle opened and revealed a very unanimated bird as a bell struck twice; he did not pop out, nor did he "cuckoo". The other two doors remained firmly shut and nothing more happened. The best sight on this roundabout had to be the look of disappointment on every single face, including my own. I asked one woman and she told me that she had been waiting there with her eight year old son for half an hour!

On my walk from the bus station to the cuckoo clock (if you can even call it that), I had spotted exactly zero fun parks/anything with flashing lights, except for one casino which looked more like a disused warehouse. I had however bought lunch in a supermarket and stopped to eat this under the shade of a space rocket sculpture located just next to an Argentinean flag classically mounted on the ever-present outline of The Falklands, erm I mean Las Malvinas. This space rocket was one of the first things that I had seen when I arrived and along with the super cheesy music that was blaring in the bus station, I really thought I was going to be in for a cheestastic day out.

There I was, at 2pm in the centre of town, just in time for everywhere to be closed for a siesta. This is not something I've really experienced in Argentina too much, but almost nothing was open except for the odd alfajor shop/factory, who offered free samples, all of which were scrumptious. As nothing was really happening in town, I decided to take a walk to the beach (Playa Fantasio). Unlike Blackpool, Carlos Paz is not on the coast, therefore the beaches are all on the riverside. I had not taken my bikini with me, so I settled at the riverside with Charlie and his glass elevator for company as I soaked up the sun. That's one thing this place has over Blackpool - sunny skies and just a slight breeze. Once I felt myself starting to cook I wandered back to town and found my first amusement arcade of the day, and quite a pathetic one at that. It did however have a game machine near to the door that was playing Oxygen by Jean Michel Jarre which won it some Blackpool-alike points.

After a rather disappointing day I headed back to the hostel to grab my bags and leave Córdoba for somewhere which might provide slightly more entertainment, and less queues.