Sierras of Cordoba
Discover Sierras of Cordoba
Introduction
The Sierras of Córdoba are a range of old, rounded granite hills in the middle of Argentina, rising out of the plain to around two thousand nine hundred metres. They are the country’s oldest holiday region — Argentines have been coming up here for the dry air and the river pools since the nineteenth century — and they sit almost exactly at the geographical centre of the country.
Córdoba, the second city of Argentina, sits at their foot. Its university was founded in 1613, the oldest in the country and among the oldest in the Americas, and the Jesuit block at its centre, together with five mission estancias out in the hills, forms a UNESCO World Heritage site. The student population gives the city a nightlife and a music scene out of proportion to its size, and cuarteto, an accordion-driven dance music, was invented here and is played nowhere else.
In the hills themselves the Punilla and Traslasierra valleys hold small towns strung along rivers — La Cumbre, Mina Clavero, Villa General Belgrano with its German-founded beer festival — and paragliding, riding and river swimming are what people come for. Above them the Quebrada del Condorito national park holds a gorge where Andean condors nest and can be watched riding the updraughts. Spring and autumn are the best months; January is hot and full.