Los Andes

Cafayate

Roughing it in Cafayate

We have been in Cafayate for a couple days and are living the good life, much appreciated after the spartan voyage from Belén via Hualfín and Santa Maria. We're going to press on from here up to Cachi and then continue straight up the high pass and over to San Antonio de Los Cobres. (Click here for a more detailed map.) Unfortunately the road is unpaved pretty much from here to SA de Los Cobres. We are budgeting 5 days for that passage, and we are taking loads of food from Cafayate -- but none of its fabulous wines.

The Torontes is my favourite white and while Malbec is a great red, the Tannat grape is supreme! We drank one with bife de lomo (ass-kicking steak) today. It was Etchard, Estado Privado, Tannat, Cafayate, Salta de Argentina, 2003 (US$3). We've lost no time sussing out the vinos in Cafayate, a region of vineyards at 2000 metres. A good value Malbec is the Finca de Dominga but the top-shelf Malbec -- which we will try soon -- is San Pedro de Yacochuya.

The splendid Tannat wine.

We are in love with Argentina. The people are so chilled, the food is so good, the scenery so beautiful. At 3 peso/USD you cannot beat it for value. Speaking of the exchange rate ... sorry, I´ve been deprived for over a month now ... "import substitution" has firmly taken hold. This part of the country is chock full of Argentine tourists, mostly from Buenos Aires, enjoying an exquisite country. Cafayate is the Taos of Argentina -- with wine. Cycling out to the El Shincal ruins we crossed paths with a pair of travellers from the capital, making a series of weeklong excursions to discover the remote northwest of their country, rightly so. That they were unimpressed with El Shincal is probably some indication of how cool most archeological ruins are here. El Shincal blew us away ... yet it was nothing compared to Quilmes ... itself no match for El Pichao in terms of unspoilt rubble.

Cafayate (note the thermos full of máte)

And tourism is undoubtedly a big export for Argentina -- if it's not, the authorities should start flogging it pronto. We tend to see way more Europeans than North Americans. In fact, we´ve seen only a handful of the latter, including a lad we've dubbed Juan Muir, and he's not actually a tourist. Of Juan more later. The Europeans are of two varieties: real and phantom. We've seen some French and British tourists (we haven't seen many foreign tourists, full stop) so they're real. Swiss and German cyclists we hear about all the time but have not seen a one. But there's no doubting their keeness for expedition cycling. And the quality of their kit cannot be beat. All of our panniers and bags are German; our rims are French.

Cafayate and its mountain backdrop

There's also no question but that this is a well pedalled route by cyclists, including the Paso Agua Negra and probably every other high pass in this region (Pircas Negras, San Francisco, Sico, etc). At the Chilean customs post (some 174 kms from the Argentine customs and a similar distance from Vicuña) the officials were clearly tired of being saddled with hungry, ill-prepared cyclists (a category which we fell into, to some extent). We asked if they had a cafeteria and they said yes -- for them.

"Didn't you bring food with you?" they asked. They assumed we were totally unprepared (we weren't -- we'd luckily stocked up at a tiny town called Guanta, the last one heading east from Vicuña, where we bought out all the tins of sardines and biscuits in the place; these and the grapes we'd been given were our only sustenance over the next three days over the pass, which explains why we cycled 140 kms on the final day in order to reach a town -- Rodeo). "Do you expect us to serve you?" they asked, clearly tired of unprepared cylists with great culinary expectations. One of them was particularly aggrieved. When Brice tried to explain that we did indeed bring food, he blurted out, "You are in South America! You should be able to speak Spanish when you come to South America."

"Nosotros podemos hablar en Español," I said. "Estamos preguntando si hay un comedor, y si ésta comedor esta abierto a extranjeros." It was probably hideous Spanish but it made the point, and the fat man disappeared, as some of the other officials became more courteous and escorted us to the eating room and offered us water.

One of the nicest days of cycling was from Rodeo to San Juan de Jáchal. The wind was blowing hard in our faces, so we decided not to stress out and to just enjoy the scenery, cycling at whatever pace suited us and stopping as often as we wanted to take photos. Good thing, because the scenery was stupendous. The road begins at a desert reservoir then follows a deep canyon gorge which spills out into a floodplain. Following this east, the cyclist is treated to a series of mountain ridges rising abruptly from the desert plain.

Back near the reservoir we spotted a cyclist coming slowly towards us on a ten speed, with beads around his neck and unkempt hair. We waved hello and stopped him to inquire about the route. In a strange act, he and I spoke Spanish to each other until realising we are both Norte Americanos. Turns out that he is married to an Argentine woman and has been living in Rosario (near Buenos Aires) for the last six months, enrolled in a master's degree programme in ecology. He was out in Rodeo visiting friends and doing some field work for his research -- on Canadian mining activity in this part of Argentina.

He was a self-described activist, passionate about raising the awareness of the local people to the problems of mining. "The mining companies use cyanide to separate the metals from the ore, and the cyanide seeps from the slurry into the ground. It hangs around the environment for quite a while. We've had those problems in the US for a long time, and the EPA is still trying to deal with the mess. I have been in touch with some EPA officials. I want them to come down here and encourage these people to avoid the problems we've had in the States."

Juan Muir, as we have since called him, is one of the few Yanquis we've met down here. "You guys are real desert rats," he said after we told him where we were planning on cycling -- throughout Northwest Argentina. It hadn´t occurred to us in those terms before, but he's right.

There's no question but that mining is a booming industry here. On the road from Belén to Santa Maria, in particular, we were treated to a series of heavy trucks going to and from the mines, each of them sending up a plume of dust for us to contend with -- usually by draping the "Mormon shirts" over our faces. Don't knock the formalware until you try it.

Speaking of road conditions. The manners of most drivers here are excellent. If anything their only sin is over-exuberance, honking a horn in your ear and waving a thumbs-up out the window. Most give us a wide berth, a smile and an approving thumbs up. It's the same off the road. Argentines are nothing if not tranquilo. We are totally impressed by it. We are both diehard Sino-philes, but the contrast of Argentine tranquilismo and Chinese inquisitiveness is pronounced. People here leave you (and your stuff) well alone. The downside of travelling here vis-a-vis China is the hua (language) -- we speak it only well enough to accomplish the basics. Much of the beauty of the people is lost on us for lack of linguistic ability, though we've certainly disfrutir-ed la gente.

I've posted some photos of highlights of the ride betweem Chilecito and here. We are now halfway through the trip, if the trip is from Santiago to La Paz, which we think it is. The next section might be the most spectacular in terms of mountain passes, and hopefully we'll have plenty of photos of the Abra el Acay to upload from San Antonio de Los Cobres.

Posted by Scott at March 19, 2005 09:56 PM