One of a few homes that the Guevara family rented was turned into a museum 10 years ago. As depicted pictorally at the museum, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez attended the opening. As far as I could tell from my guidebook and the interwebs, this was possibly the only museum or really any acknowledgement of Che in Argentina (save, of course, the "enlightened" tourists we've seen around the country in Che tshirts).
As soon as we arrived in the Cordoba bus station, our fifth by that point, we headed straight to the fabled showers mentioned in Gabby's guidebook. After likely overstsaying our welcome in said showers, we headed out of town about an hour to Alta Gracia. When I sat down beside a young man and opened up my lonely planet he turned to me and asked in Spanish (with a slight eye roll) if I was looking for Che's house. Unlike the time our host in Salta (who I'd taken to calling, affectionatly, Grampy) asked us why we would want to go to Alta Gracia and I'd said 'no, it's embarrassing' (before relenting), no, this time I just grinned and replied "si." he proceeded to give me directions of which I understood only the first part: you're on the right bus. After he finished his long set of directions I think my doe eyed expression rightly indicated to him that I'd not understood. He then told me, so I thought and was later confirmed, that he lived near the house and would help us find it. When we arrived he signalled for us to get off and then showed us the way through my and Gabby's new language here: miming.
After a few unsure turns through a beautiful suburban neighbourhood - yes, Che was, as the museum stated time and again, from an aristrocratic background - we were met with a simple sign saying "le casa de che" complete with an arrow. Two minutes later we arrived and paid. Two minutes later or so, I was standing beside, I believe, a replica motorcycle to the one young Ernesto and Alberto had taken around a large part of South America. As I forced Gabby to take photos of me, I reached to pretend to have my hand around the handle of the motorcycle, only to set off an alarm. Gabby and I were both scared and she said "I thought you promised not to do something to get kicked out until the end!" Alas, we were fine, nothing happened and I heard the alarm set off by several others. In fact, as Gabby would insist I mention, I myself set it off once more whilst taking photos of pages from Che's "motorcycle diaries."
The museum itself was fairly well put together for a smaller space. The rest of our tour entailed some learning as well as me convincing Gabby to take a picture of me in the old bathroom ("Che most likely shit here, you know" I informed Gabby), and ended in the backyard. In the backyard, we were met with beautiful sun and lawn chairs. Gabby excitedly informed me we also had the opportunity to buy beer and drink it in Che's yard.
In the backyard I'd asked Gabby if she'd learned anything cool to which she replied "not anything you don't already know." This response was in reference to our drive through the mountains where she'd asked me about Che's biographical details and about 30 mins later she had them - all. That conversation had, however, got me excited to see Che's house as he's a man I'd not thought of much lately, but always carried a sort of, if you will, ambivalent admiration for (I know, I know he often did things I can't defend, e.g. shooting - or having someone shoot - desserters; or thinking, so naively, he could simply export what happened in Cuba to other countries like the Congo or Bolivia as if it were a recipe and context had no relevance).
In any case, when the woman working opened the shop where we could buy beer, Gabby slowly talked me down from buying everything else as well. I did pick up a few things including a cigar which I smoked in Che's backyard whilst drinking beer in the sun and embarrassing Gabby by making her take photos of this.
We eventually left Alta Gracia to head back to Cordoba, where vegetarian restaurants and a former detention centre, now museum, awaited us - except they were all closed; all. of. them. Everything was closed. We walked around with our 'hanger' growing, settled on a crappy tourist restaurant as it was open and then walked around. We still had hours to kill so we thought maybe a movie, as we approached the cinema, we saw there was also cosmic bowling. And so four rounds of bowling later, we were rushing to the bus station. Maybe I should have listened to my Salta 'Grampy' when he said "what are you going to do in Cordoba?" with a scrunched up face. No, Cordoba was not my favourite. Though did I mention the bus station has showers?
No comments:
Post a Comment