Córdoba Tour and a Church

This morning I took a one-hour Córdoba tour on a double-decker bus, did some more walking around central Córdoba, and visited a church, not in that order.

(Because there is some chance, infinitesimal though it may be, that someone will stumble on this post out of the blue, I should note that I’m in Córdoba, Argentina now, not Córdoba, Spain.

My guidebook told me there are a couple of English-language tours of the central part of Córdoba for which I could get information at a tourist office beside Plaza San Martín, where I was yesterday.

I took a pleasant stroll to the square and found the tourist office, no problem. I went in. There were two people on the other side of the counter, and no one else in the office. I asked the women behind the counter if they spoke English. No. And no.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my iPhone, and used Google Translate to ask about English-language tours. One of the women handed me two small pieces of printed paper from different companies.

The text on both of the tiny leaflets was primarily in Spanish, although one did have some English on it. And both had the Spanish word Inglés on them, which I take is the Spanish word for “English.”

I don’t know, but I would have thought that if the tour companies had any English proficiency, they would have used the English word for “English” to draw the eyes of the anglophones they’re trying to attract, even if that’s the only English word they included. I guess not.

I, still with the help of Google Translate, asked where they were. One of the women pointed to the brochures and said just, “WhatsApp.” Sure enough, both leaflets had not just numbers but also QR codes that would take me directly to a WhatsApp call to them.

But I didn’t want the WhatsApp option. I’ve had to make a lot of use of Google Translate here because the availability of English has been far from universal. I didn’t know how to make use of a translate function on a WhatsApp call if I needed it.

I didn’t need to know the location of one of the tours. I could see from their leaflet that it was a double-decker bus tour. One of their buses was parked on another side of the square. And I walked by someone wearing the company’s t-shirt just before I got to the tourist information office.

But the other tour looked like a walking tour, which I would have preferred. So I asked again about the location for that one. One of the women did manage a couple of words of English.

“Five?” She then turned to the other woman. The other woman shrugged. The first woman hesitantly repeated “five” and added “doors?” Shrug. “Um, doors.” She then pointed in a direction.

I walked more than five doors in that direction but didn’t see anything that looked like it was a tour office. Maybe whoever runs the tours doesn’t have an office, but that’s where they start the tour at whatever time it starts. I don’t know.

I went to the guy selling the bus tours and asked him about the English tour.

He spoke English quite well. He asked me where I was from.

“Canada.”

“Canada is great,” he responded. “I lived in New York for a while and I went to Montreal and Toronto. They’re beautiful cities.”

I can’t imagine he enjoyed his first visit to Toronto all that much, though. He told me he went in January and knew nothing about the climate in Toronto at that time of year before he went. I didn’t quite understand that part because he visited while he was living in New York. Unlike in Argentina, where January is the middle of summer, in New York, just like in Toronto, it’s the middle of winter. And while New York isn’t typically quite as cold as Toronto is in the winter, it still gets cold.

The upshot is that he didn’t bring warm clothes when he visited Toronto and ended up in hospital with pneumonia.

With that discussion out of the way, he told me that the first Córdoba tour in English was at 11:00, a little more than an hour off. And the bus by the square wasn’t the English bus. The English bus was about a five- or ten-minute walk away.

I bought a ticket for the English Córdoba tour from him.

He told me where the bus would be located. I found the location on Google Maps and showed it to him. After he confirmed it was the right spot, I dropped a pin on Google Maps and set off to fill some time before the Córdoba tour. In my time-filling, enjoyable stroll, I stopped to take a look at a church recommended by my guidebook and my walking tour app, namely Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús (Church of the Society of Jesus).

Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus

The Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, which was built between 1640 and 1676, is the oldest church in Córdoba City.

The exterior is quite plain. It’s made of sand-coloured stone bricks with slightly lighter mortar. The front facade has a few small, simple windows with arched tops. The three simple doors are also arched.

Three horizontal rows of what look like small, square portals also penetrate somewhat the wall of the front facade. I didn’t look closely at the church’s back wall from inside, so it’s possible I missed them, but I don’t think they tunnel through the wall.

Stubby towers timidly rise from the two front corners of the roof of the church.

The interior is quite sombre. That is not to say that it’s not decorated at all, just that the wall decorations are tastefully sparse and the colours are, looked at as package, rather dark.

The ceiling is interesting. It’s arched, with ribbing spaced close together. At first, the ribs looked gold-coloured to me, but taking a picture straight up showed that the edges are gold-coloured, but there are stripes of what I think are aqua, light pink, and rust-colour running the length of each rib. In between the ribs, there are bands of patterns using the same colours, except for the gold. The patterns in each inter-rib band are different.

Beside the main sanctuary, there’s a smaller chapel (but bigger than a typical side chapel in old churches) that’s more heavily decorated and brighter.

Archaeological Excavation

After leaving the church, there was still some time before the Córdoba tour, but I decided to walk to the departure point to make sure I was on time. On the route I took following Google Maps, I passed an exposed archaeological excavation, with just railings so gawkers could look in.

There was some signage, all in Spanish. Some signs had black lettering on a white background. I was able to easily use the Google Translate camera function on those, but they primarily just tersely listed what each section of the excavated areas was. Signs with a little more information were grey lettering on tinted glass. Google Translate was able to read much of that, but it struggled and failed to read it all. I think there’s a lot of information I missed or Google mistranslated.

I did figure out that the now-excavated building components were from the Jesuit period in Córdoba, but I’m not sure when that was.

I think Google must have made at least one translation error even on the easily readable black-and-white signs. It said the English translation of the sign’s subtitle was “Archaeological Materiality.” What does that mean? I thought it might have meant the materials used. But the subsequent bullet points under it suggested otherwise.

There were 10 points on the sign, but Google Translate left the fourth one blank. Google translated the first three as:

1. Jesuit brick floor.
2. Jesuit southern party wall.
3. Wall dividing two rooms (Jesuit period).

I have a feeling the second one is a sloppy translation. I’m not an expert in these things, so maybe it’s a false stereotype I have in my head, but I never thought of Jesuits as big partygoers. That’s just the southern party wall? How many party walls did those wild and crazy guys have?

(Don’t believe that’s how Google Translate translated it? I took a screenshot and included it here.)

After spending a couple of minutes looking at the excavations, I headed to the Córdoba tour departure point.

Córdoba Tour

When I arrived, the bus for the Córdoba tour was sitting right where it was supposed to be. I went to the woman dressed in the company t-shirt and standing at the bus door and I asked her if this was indeed the bus for the English Córdoba tour. She responded by saying something in Spanish.

I asked her if she spoke English. She said no and called over another woman in a company t-shirt. That woman, in English, confirmed it was the tour I was looking for. I showed her the stub that the guy at Plaza San Martin gave me. She looked at a clipboard and asked me if I was Joel. I said yes because why would I lie about something like that? I’m not in the witness protection program yet. Yet.

(They don’t have ESP. The guy at Plaza San Martin asked me for my name. He must have transmitted it somehow.)

The tour wasn’t very expensive: 8,000 Argentinian pesos for retired people, and 10,000 for other adults. The peso-to-US dollar conversion is easier than the peso-to-CDN dollar conversion. The peso-to-US exchange is roughly 1,000:1. So that’s about $8 US and $10 US for the tour. They probably could have figured out a way to charge a lot more if they had ESP.

After I established it was the English Córdoba tour and they confirmed that I had a ticket, I was invited onboard the double-decker bus. The top deck was uncovered and, despite the blazing sun in the cloudless sky, I chose to sit on the uncovered top deck on this hot day.

All of the other passengers sat up there as well. In total, there were roughly a dozen customers on the Córdoba tour.

The commentary was live, not recorded. The guide, who was the woman who spoke to me in English at the bus door, came upstairs, picked up a microphone, and started introducing herself, welcoming the guests, and telling them the rules of the bus. At least, I think that’s what she was saying. She was speaking Spanish.

She then, with a broad smile on her face, made and kept exclusive eye contact with me, and in English, said, “Welcome, mister. You’re the only one who speaks English on this tour. (I assume she was excluding herself because she spoke English. It was heavily accented English, but reasonably good nonetheless.)

She then proceeded, still in English, to introduce herself and tell me the rules of the bus. During the tour, she alternated between Spanish and English. However, unless Spanish is much more verbose than English, the other passengers got significantly more information than I did.

Through the tour, which stuck to the central part of Córdoba, the guide mentioned many of the buildings, their function, and their ages. She also talked about some of the other landmarks, such as a statue in a small square immediately beside the Córdoba Tour’s starting and ending point. I forget the subject of that statue, but I remember it was brought in from Italy.

(I mentioned it in one or more of my posts from Buenos Aires, but, despite being a Spanish-speaking country, considerably more people in Argentina have some Italian heritage than Spanish heritage.)

She also spoke a little about Córdoba. For example, I learned that it is Argentina’s second-most populous city, with a population of 1.5 million people.

The Córdoba tour spent a little time driving through a large urban park, Sarmiento Park. I had already been thinking about going there this afternoon. My guidebook didn’t mention anything about it, but it is a large green and blue blob on Google Maps, indicating a large park with a water feature, and I thought it would be a pleasant place to check out. And it looked so from the bus.

My walking tour app didn’t mention Sarmiento Park either, but it did list the Córdoba Zoo and its map showed the zoo in Sarmiento Park. I didn’t see any sign of the zoo as we went through the park.

In the park, we passed by a statue of Dante Alighieri. The Italian influence continues.

We drove by a section of Sarmiento Park with a sign saying it was “Parque de la Biodiversidad.” The guide talked about the plants and birds in it and she said twice in English, and I assume at least twice in Spanish, “but no animals!”

I figured okay, so that’s not the zoo. I’m fine with that. She also said that I could go into Parque de la Biodiversidad for free, but I first had to make a reservation online.

When the Córdoba Tour ended, I found a shaded bench and looked for the website to make a reservation for Parque de la Biodiversidad. I found it, but I also discovered more information about why the guide repeated, “But no animals!” at least a couple of times. But I’ll save that for this afternoon’s post because I did indeed go there and this post is getting very long. Even I’m bored now, despite not being so when I started writing this post.