NORTHWEST ARGENTINA ADVENTURES

And now, as promised, here follows a rather lengthy recounting of the adventures of the last few days, primarily during the time while I was out of contact with the virtual world and deeply connected with the real one, at least as it exists here in this most spectacular and vast corner of it. In yesterday´s post I had already posted a self-portrait taken while I was out on my hike on the 23rd of February, taking in the stunning landscapes there in the remote realms of Argentina´s Jujuy Province. The above picture will give you a sense of the terrain and its raw beauty. That was the spot where I stopped to enjoy the snacks I had brought along and re-hydrate myself with fluids.
It was, as you can imagine, a sublime day spent communing with the Pachamama (Earth Mother) spirit, which is still much revered by the Quechua peoples there in the Susques region, the anciuent, indigenous predecessor to the Catholic Church which also claims the loyalties of the locals.

The next day I left my convenient accomodations at Pastos Chicos, which is really the only place to stay in Susques. I was determined to make it all the way to the marvelous little city of Cafayate, which is in neighboring Salta Province.

Knowing that I had my options as to which route I should take, but also that the paved route that goes through the cities of San Salvador de Jujuy as well as the metropolis of Salta itself, I opted to go once more on the shorter (and presumed faster) unpaved route that would lead me back up onto the heights of the mountains east of San Antonio de Los Cobres, and the treacherous high mountain pass known as Abra del Acay, which my antiquated Argentine guidebook (published by Argentina´s YPF) calls the highest motor pass in the world, some 4970 meters above sea level (which translates to about 16,300 feet altitude!) The above image shows one view from that summit.

Now as my luck would have it, I became an unintentional collaborator in a rather tedious two-vehicle recovery effort which involved:

1.) A Hertz rental car that some American tourists had rented in Salta and had foolishly tried to take over the high Abra del Acay summit - a 2wd, low-clearance car, which is literally crazy considering that all guidebooks warn that only high-profile 4x4 vehicles should attempt the pass.

2.) A tow truck belonging to Auxilio, a mobile auto repair outfit that operates out of Salta, who advertize that they will service anything "within 500 miles of Salta," which had broken down on its attempt to reach the abandoned Hertz rental car that the gringoes had left half submerged in the raging mountain river that the route crosses a half-dozen times.

Anyway, to make this very long intro a bit shorter I will say that once Hertz learned that Auxilio´s recovery tow truck had broken down, they sent out their own recovery team to try to extract their rental vehicle from the river, while Auxilio sent a second tow truck, with two drivers, to try to salvage both their own broken down truck and also the lost Hertz vehicle. I came into the picture as I happened to be driving into the route from the north, and soon found myself coming along behind the Auxilio recovery tow truck. In front of them was another vehicle, a pickup truck driven by a businessman from Cafayate and acompanied by his girlfriend. They were out for a drive in the country, ostensibly to avoid the crowds in Cafayate that weekend for the town´s annual "Serenata de Cafayate," a huge folk music festival. They suddenly broke down, and the Auxilio guys were thus forced to lend assistance to try to fix what turned out to be only an empty gas tank (the Cafayate businessman luckily had somme spare gas in an auxiliary can).

Anyway, he stopped at the summit while the Auxilio team and I continued onward down the south slope to the point at which their broken-down rig was. I stopped with them, knowing that it would be foolish to continue on this narrow road knowing that the abandoned Hertz vehicle would be blocking my passage. So I offered to lend a hand to the two Auxilio mechanics. They sent me out on foot to do reconnaisance of the route below where they were laboring on the clutch of the broken-down tow truck. The route ahead was ugly, and I reported back to them that I felt that either of their vehicles might not make it past a very narrow and washed-out stretch some 500 meters down from us. Anyway, that grim fact was dismissed when the Hertz recovery team came along, slugging their way uphill with their abandoned rental car (obviously undrivable) in tow. Once they reached our place in the road, the job became one of fixing and extricating the damaged tow truck as well as the inoperable rental car.

We then formed a rather impromptu caravan, as the chief of the Hertz crew, a fellow named Pedro Foa, strongly advised me to abandon my plans to try to go on down through the most ruggewd part of the road, which is the part where the road crosses the rampaging mountain river some half-dozen times. Okay, so I was going back these guys, and would loise a day in my quest to get to Cafayate.

Once the Auxilio guys had fixed the clutch on their tow rig, the next problem would be how to turn the massive vehicle around on the narrow canyon road. It was not hard for me to turn my pickup around, and they Auxilio guys were also able to turn their recovery tow truck around, but this original tow truck was just too long to pull it off. They ended up using the recovery tow truck to tow the bigger truck sideways while we all pushed on it, to swing it around without it going over the edge! Once that was acomplished, we set out in tandem to go back over the summit and go back to San Antonio de Los Cobres.

We determined that the two damaged vehicles should be front and back, with the good tow truck and me in the middle. In that order we inched our way back to the summit, where we stopped to tke part in a rather crude but rewarding "lunch break."

This picture shows the two Auxilio drivers saluting me while Pedro Foa of Hertz looked on.

And the next picture shows our caravan as it was parked at the summit of Abra del Acay. Considering the treacherous nature of the road still before us, it would take us another two hours to get our vehicles down the mountain and make

the 45 km drive back to San Antonio de Los Cobres.

So the next day I set out on my second day´s attempt to get to Cafayate. In retrospect, of course, I wished I would have thought to have taken Ruta 51 from San Antonio de Los Cobres in the direction of Salta instead of trying that awful mountain road, but naturally I didn´t know. But what I encountered was another spectacular bit of impressive Northwestern Argentine
scenery, which made the lost day seem even more bittersweet. This picture here shows just a small glimpse of some of the rugged beauty on this route, with a forest of Cardón Cacti populating an arroyo in the very beautiful Quebrada de Toro, which the route follows for a long distance.

Farther on the vegetation becomes more lush, as one can see in this shot which looks up the quebrada and back at the small-gauge railroad bridge that crosses the Río Toro. It was a very beautiful drive, and I was so glad to finally make it into Cafayate yesterday at around 4 p.m. Buit of course, the place was mobed with people, as it was the last night of the Serenata de Cafayate set to begin. Although I would have loved to have gone to take in some of the music, I was more preocupied with some more pressing and certainly more plebian necessities: namely finding lodging and then getting some food and water into my system. Then, once that was taken care of, I could finally go out and enjoy some of the finest wine produced on the planet: Organic Malbec wine, locally produced at one of the several great wineries located here in Cafayate.

So that´s my story, and you should now consider yourselves all brought up to date. Today I am getting my laundry done, and then I will be here for one full day to relax, tomorrow. I will then set out on a rather urgent push to get to the town of Villa Dolores, far south of here, and west of the major city of Córdoba. They used to call such a long haul "ballin´the jack," so I guess that is what I will be planning to do on the last day of the month. I am scheduled to arrive ion Villa Dolores on March 2nd, the guest of the family of my friend Matias Martino whom I met on Tierra Del Fuego back during my first trip down to South America in 2002-2003.