ARGENTINA REGION BY REGION - Argentina - page 181

3 Villa General
Belgrano
Road map B2. 55 miles (89km) SW
of Córdoba. * 5,000. @ n Julio A.
Roca 168, [phone].
Open 8:30am-8:30pm daily. _
Oktoberfest Beer Festival (Oct).
∑ vgb.gov.ar/turismovgb
Founded in the 1930s, Villa
General Belgrano is one of
Argentina's top holiday resorts.
A significant percentage of the
population is descended from
the surviving crew of the
Admiral Graf Spee , the German
pocket battleship scuttled
off the Uruguayan coast in
1939. A monument to the
crew stands in Plazoleta
Graf Spee.
The town's main
thoroughfare, Avenida
Julio Roca, is lined with
beer cellars and souvenir
shops; the former
purveying authentic
German food and drink,
the latter, an assortment
of tourist merchandise. With its
chocolate shops, Lutheran
chapels, and strains of oom-pah
music, Villa Belgrano still
preserves a vibrant Germanic
atmosphere, especially when it
explodes into life in October
with the increasingly popular
annual beer festival.

A pleasant midsummer view of the meandering Río Cosquín

circling majestically overhead.
Numerous trails, some arduous
and slippery, wind
down the steep
canyon and alongside
the river at the bottom.
There is a wide variety
of flora and fauna that can
be found along the way,
including giant ferns and
rare white gentians, wild
cats, foxes, indigenous
rodents, and several
types of snake, none of
which are venomous.

the river of the same name
and in the shadow of the
4,150-ft (1,260-m) El Pan de
Azúcar. The summit of this
sugar-loaf mountain affords
great views of the sierras. It
can be reached by aerosilla
(chairlift) from the well-
signposted lower station
located at the foot of the hill.
Cosquín's fame rests on its
unofficial status as Argentina's
folklore capital. The Festival
Nacional de Folklore, held
annually in January in Plaza
Próspero Molina, draws many
folk and classical musicians,
dance troupes, and fans from
around Argentina and beyond.
The town's best year-round
visitor attraction is Museo
Camín Cosquín, on the RN38,
which displays local archaeo-
logical and paleontological
finds, including fossils,
semiprecious stones, jewelry,
and ceramics crafted by the
area's pre-Hispanic inhabitants.

The majestic
condor

5 Cosquín
Road map B2. 40 miles (63 km) NW of
Córdoba. * 19,000. @ n Cosquín
San Martín 590, [phone]. _
Festival Nacional de Folklore (Jan).
∑ cosquinturismo.gob.ar

Dating back to colonial times,
Cosquín is one of the oldest
settlements in the region. This
town is built on the banks of

4 Parque Nacional
Quebrada del
Condorito
Road map B2. 53 miles (85 km) SW of
Córdoba. @ n Fundación Cóndor,
[phone]. Open 24hrs daily
(visitor center: 9am-4pm Mon-Fri,
8am-8pm Sat, Sun, & hols). 8 call
ahead. - by prior arrangement.
∑ condoritoapn.com.ar

The Boyhood of Ernesto Guevara
It was because four-year-old Ernesto
Guevara suffered from asthma that his
family left behind the muggy climate of
Rosario for the drier air of Alta Gracia in
1932. Although he never shook off the
asthma, his childhood was both happy
and active and he excelled at sports. The
young Ernesto's mind was no less agile. He
competed in local chess tournaments from
a young age and plundered his father's
library for literary treasures ranging from
Jack London to Sigmund Freud. For the
adult Che, life would only become richer.
He left Córdoba to study medicine at the University of Buenos
Aires in 1947, before embarking on the first of his well-chronicled
cross-country journeys in 1949. His radicalism dates from here; the
restlessness and travel-hunger of a boy who read London and Verne
long before he touched Marx and Trotsky was already present.

Covering an area of 16 sq miles
(41 sq km), Parque Nacional
Quebrada del Condorito is one
of the few places in the world
where condors can be seen in
their natural habitat. The park
surrounds a deep, misty gorge
that cuts through the hills of
the Pampa de Achala. The
ravines form an ideal breeding
ground for condors, and adult
birds with wing spans of
over 10 ft (3 m) can be seen

The revolutionary Che as a
young man