Cowboys and Cordoba

We were a little more active during our one day and night in Cordoba than we had been in Salta. Cordoba is the second-largest city in Argentina after Buenos Aires and is known as a lively university town however, being in the southern hemisphere, it's university holidays at the moment so it wasn't as busy as we'd thought. That wasn't an issue in the end as we'd been told about a festival in a town called Jesus Maria about an hour outside Cordoba so we caught a bus there that night.

It turns out the 'Festival de Doma y Folklore de Jesus Maria' is one of Argentina's largest festivals. We arrived at around 11pm to a flood of locals enjoying 'parrilla' and listening to live music in tents. The smell of meat and smoke from the barbeque was strong and, seeing as we'd had an Arabic meal back in Cordoba, we headed to the main stadium. Surprisingly, we were two of the few 'gringos' (foreigners). The place was packed with local families, most with young children, listening to live Latino bands and waving signs at cameras that panned across the crowd. After a while, the real show began. About 50 'gauchos' (cowboys) filed into the stadium on horseback to compete in a barrel race. This display was the epitome of machismo! Dressed to the nines in bombachas pants, neck scarves and boina hats, and egged on by the roaring crowed, they raced each other twice through the circuit, sharply manoevering their horses around each barrel. It was certainly an experience and, although we were tired the next day having got back early that morning, we were really glad to have seen it.

It wasn't all horse racing and cowboys, we managed to see the Cordoba zoo, tucked away on the city’s border in some parkland.

I haven’t been to a zoo since I was a kid, so it was great to re-live the golden years. We saw the usual – lions, tigers, reptiles, birds – but the highlight was definitely the hippos. Biggest hippos imaginable! Well maybe that’s exaggerating a little as I’ve not been to Africa, but these hippos were seriously big!

Unfortunately Cordoba zoo is no Taronga. Some of the ‘enclosures’ were hardly bigger than the animals themselves and many had little or no water supply, which, on the sweltering hot day that it was, was very concerning. And of course a visit to the zoo wouldn’t be the same without the ubiquitous South American risk factors. You could practically put your hands through the bars and touch the animals if you wanted, as you can see in my up-close-and-personal zebra shot here for which no zoom was needed (he was obviously a bit camera shy, given the angle). So my advice would be to put the kids on a leash next time you visit Cordoba zoo so they can leave with limbs.