Chapter 7 Flirting with the Atacama

Día 49-50: Exploring the devil’s throat and other Che-based activities (194km)

Post #44

Día 49 The Devil’s Highway

Cafayate to La Viña (GPX 107km)

As we burrow deeeper into Argentina’s far north the landscape is starkly different to our southern start point. The Magellanic Subpolar and Decidious forests are a distant memory. The beech, pine and cypress trees of Patagonia have been replaced by panoramas new and flora distinctive. The provinces of Salta and Jujuy [Hu-huy] are full of red rock mountains, humid jungles and barren altiplano. The latter gives a hint of what is to come in Bolivia and Peru.

Nicole and I drive the 250km from Belén to Cafayete on the straighest of straight roads. The thought of cycling them makes me shudder now I don’t have to. It’s good to be on the other side of the windscreen for once. In Santa María we stop for coffee, still making good time for Nic’s first session of the day. I ask the attendant if they have cheese toasties,

“No, we have only ham and cheese. Cheese will take too long.”

Hmm. O-k.

The coffees are soon scalding my legs as Nicole navigates the deep dips of water drains that cut across the road.

In Cafayete, the Airbnb screams of a luxury we haven’t yet experienced. I say we. Whilst Jake and I have often slept in icy conditions, Nicole tried some of the finest hotels in Mexico and Costa Rica with friends and siblings prior to meeting us in Santiago. She made this possible by working at least one day a week throughout her travels, creating the financial wiggle room for a few more freshly pressed towels and complimentary bars of soap. Today, this opulence is exactly what I need. We even have a pool.

Cafayete is gorgeous; nestled in the Valles Calchaquíes between desert and sierra, it’s hemmed in by vineywards on all sides. The plaza hints at a colonial past but remains understated. The warm climate means it’s the perfect place to get a mullet cut to give those tanning rays unfettered access to the sides of my head.

In the evening we sit on a rooftop bar and drink cool beers after sharing a dozen empanandas with varied fillings. The temperature drops to a fresh, bracing air. By early morning it’s absolutely freezing.

The next day I run through town and up towards the Seven Waterfalls but am refused entry without cash in my pocket. Upon return a fully clothed jump into the piscina is required; an ice cold tonic to my roasting skin.

Later, Jake arrives with new friend Steve, an American bike tourer who hitch-hiked in the Daft Punk van before Belén. We lounge around drinking red win by the pool and listening to Arlo Park’s new record, full of southern Californian verve; a mellow moment for our plucky riders.

Steve wants to stick around in Cafayete for a few more days, but Nicole’s return date is creeping closer; she still needs to recross the Andes to deliver the van safely to Chile. It’s no problem for me and Jake, we have one of the roads of the trip planned for the route out of Cafayete. Ruta Nacional 68 drops through a gorge in a nature reseve called Quebrada de las Conchas. It’s a drive peppered with geological rock formations, steep cliffs, and natural miradors. The elevation isn’t strenuous and the gorge leads us downhill towards the city of Salta.

The day is unique. We meet the van five or six times over the sunlight hours and hop off our vehicles to take in each sight. They have evocative names like the Devil’s Throat, The Ampitheatre, The Castles, and, (somewhat less impressively) The Frog.

The big camera is out, snapping away for shots that grasp the joy of the moment. Stops for empanadas are regular, and one dusty shack takes Jake’s prize for parceled pastry of the trip. Here they stuff them with spicy potato and the result is glorious. We have to ask for more whilst watching tourists annoy a nearby llama by posing with arms around its neck. I’ve got everything crossed that they get spat at, but ultimately I’m disappointed.

However, the bad things about this area, in terms of roads, are compensated by the magnificent panoramas. We enter the heart of the mountainous area and around each curve something new amazes us. (…) I have the opportunity to admire one of the most beautiful landscapes on the routes: at the edge of the road there is a kind of railway bridge, supported only by the stays, and under which the Juramento River runs (…) I stay for a while "Looking at the water."

Che Guevara describing the road to Salta in 1950

After lunch the red rocks remain but are garnished with jungle greens that speak of plentiful rains we are yet to witness. A fleet of piglets scurry across the road after Jake passes, snorting gleefully as they disappear into the bushes. A municipal campsite is our spot for the evening, youths play hockey and football now the heat is out of the day. We cook pitchside and swill a little more wine. We’re making the most of the these last days in Argentina; Bolivia won’t offer this quality at such a good price.

A planned Sucession episode is thwarted by a corrupted file, so we reschedule to finish the final four in Salta at the weekend. Nicole only has 3 days left.

Día 50 Salta la Linda (Salta the Beautiful)

La Viña to Salta (GPX 87km)

Guevara’s 1952 trans-continental trip with his great friend Alberto Granado has passed into popular folklore. However, a journey that has attracted much less attention is Guevara’s solo route on a motorized bike two years earlier. In 1950, at 21-years old, he had set off alone from the capital Buenos Aires. He planned to visit Granado in San Francisco del Chañar, in the province of Córdoba, before continuing on to Tucumán and Salta in the far north. His little vehicle for the trip would run on fumes for a limited time but he had to pedal once the petrol ran out. He travelled more than 4,000km solo on that trip.

Guevara on his bicimoto in 1950

There was a mischievous element to his travels; he talked his way into accommodation at hospitals by pretending he was already a qualified doctor. He was a committed diarist and carefully detailed everything he saw, marvelling at nature and rejecting society (and the dodgy roads) in equal measure. As a youth, he was an avid reader and had managed to carve out a distinctive and informative writing style.

I realize then that something that had been growing within the bustle of the city for a long time has matured in me; And it is the hatred of civilization, the crude image of people moving like crazy to the rhythm of that tremendous noise occurs to me as the hateful antithesis of peace, the kind in which the silent rustling of the leaves forms a melodious background music.

Che, 1950

Back in 2023, everything’s set up for a fast day. The objective? Get to Salta as quickly as possible, a night out in the largest city since Mendoza (on Día 38) calls. We leave Nicole dozing and take basic provisions along for the ride to guarantee a rapid pace.

Thousands of birds wheel above lush green fields. Cows graze in fenced off fields and motorbikes screech past us, making the most of the quiet roads on a Saturday morning.

“Have we cycled back to Gloucester?”

Arriving to Salta, Che’s influence is obvious. There are statues, street names and emblems all around. Clearly here is a place he is remembered more positively than others.

Perhaps a young Guevara would have marveled at us passing 4,000km powered by legs alone. He certainly would have appreciated the 32 (THIRTY-TWO) empanadas we ordered with fuzzy heads the next morning (for our sins, Nicole only had 4). He may not have understood the 5 Taylor Swift songs in-a-row that blared out of a ram packed gay bar towards the end of the night, but we had an excellent time.

It’s another city seen. Argentina is almost over, but the journey goes on.

That young man who left on January 1, 1950 on a moped, never thought that just nine years later he would be celebrating the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, fulfilling a key role with the rank of commander, already transmuted into world history as Che Guevara.

An image from the 1950 journey, possibly in Tucumán

Note: the story and photos are borrowed from an article in Página12, Los días que el Che Guevara pasó en Salta, written by Facundo Sinatra Soukoyan in December 2022.

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The story so far

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

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Odometer: 50 Tours. 238 hours. 4,056km. 40,220m.

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