Rosario - January 28th

We are a bit late up this morning as we both suffered a bit from dodgy stomachs the previous night.  The culprit in my mind is the place we had dinner in Cordoba on our second night.  We had a big salad there and from the glimpse we got into the kitchen on our way out I have to say it didn’t look the most sanitary of places.  Still unlike in India it was a once off event, not a two day crippling incident.

Our day in Rosario starts with our now usual look around the shops as Dorota searches for those perfect pair of Argentinian trousers.  Luckily today we find them after not too many shops have been entered into and we can continue with looking around the town.  Rosario is different from Cordoba in a number of ways, mainly it is a much taller place, the apartments that line the streets are 10-12 stories high instead of 3-4, which gives much needed shade, and it doesn’t have as much historical background.  But it does have a more lively feel to it, even after everything shuts down at lunchtime for siesta (and this being a Saturday nothing reopens).  So it is a pleasant place to walk through.

Rosario’s three claims to fame are it is the birthplace of Che Guevara, Lionel Messi, and the Argentine flag.  We visit the place where Che lived, but it is a private apartment still so you can’t go in.  There is a large monument to the flag, which you can go up and get panoramic views of the city, so we of course do that.  There are no monuments to Messi, in fact we don’t even see many posters or people wearing his shirt. I think I read once that he isn’t actually too popular here.

The rest of the day is spent lazing on the banks of the river Parana, the massive river that flows through northern Argentina.  It is really interesting, because on the opposite banks from this big city is jungle, and in the middle are tropical islands with beaches.  We were going to go over but the queues of locals were far too long for us to stand in, so we contented ourselves with sitting out the day in the city parks.  Our taste of the river was in our dinner, where we shared a massive grilled fish that had been caught locally.