by Jerold Last
We’ll still have to follow up on any more leads we get while we’re there,” Suzanne suggested. “Do you have any suggestions besides meeting the realtor?”
“Yes, I do. It’s almost time for us to go back home. I’d like to pretend we’re real tourists long enough to walk around the city and see what it looks like. How about taking a winery tour and tasting some of the local wines? I know you’ll feel a whole lot better if we knew a little more about why your father was killed before we finish our investigation. I’m optimistic we’ll learn more about why he was killed when we talk to that realtor in Cafayate.”
Chapter9.The Road to Cafayate
We were good to go at 8:15 the next morning after a continental breakfast of bad coffee and mediocre croissants. Our rental car was conveniently parked on the street beside the hotel entrance. All of the requisite paperwork had been completed the previous day when we had rented a car to visit Santa Rosa de Tastil. The car, which had been manufactured in Argentina, was a subcompact and nominally a Fiat. The tank was full with the local diesel fuel called “gasoil”. The full tank gave us enough range to drive all of the way to Cafayate (about 183 km or 120 miles) and back, but we were strongly advised to be sure we had more than half a tank whenever we left the national highways.
Suzanne found the map and was the designated navigator, while I drove. According to the map we would be on paved roads for the entire trip south to Cafayate unless we took any side trips, a pleasant change from our bus tourism experiences into the Andes Mountains to the north and west of Salta City. There was moderate traffic on the streets of Salta this Friday morning, but I got the hang of driving by the local rules fairly quickly. Even this traffic had disappeared from the highway within less than an hour. There were virtually no other cars on the road as we drove beyond Salta’s urban sprawl.
A short time later we drove up a low mountain at the southern end of the valley that contained Salta City, went through a pass, drove back downhill, and found ourselves either on the moon or in the remotest parts of Utah. The rock formations along the road seemed to have been randomly imported from another world. The geology is sedimentary rock and the wind blows continuously, so the rock is weathered and striated. We continuously got to see Mother Nature’s talents as a sculptor.
Rosa’s notes on the map guided us to two particularly interesting rock formations within a short walk from the highway, both of which were worth stopping to see. We would have completely missed both of them without her notes. The first was “The Giant’s Footstep”, where the sedimentary layer had folded in on itself as if a giant had slipped in a thin crust of pizza dough and left his footprint while walking up a 500-foot vertical wall. The second was “The Amphitheater”, a natural amphitheater carved into the rock with a clear sandy floor and vertical striated rock walls that extended up for several hundred feet. The acoustics were almost perfect within the enclosed area, so you could talk in natural tones to someone on the other side of the enclosure. Additional rock sculptures decorated the sides of the road as we passed by. We saw frogs and toads, other animals, and whatever our imagination wanted to conjure up as we sped past the various formations.
Suzanne read to me from her ever-present guidebook. “Those Spanish conquistadores who made it possible for Spain to colonize so much of the Americas were pretty horny guys. They spent a lot of years being soldiers far away from their homes in Spain without any real contact with women. Many had wives at home they hadn’t seen for years. One of the many slang Spanish words for a woman’s breasts is “tetons”, which is why we have the Grand Tetons mountain range and National Park in Wyoming. Any time those horny soldiers saw a mountain with two peaks they fantasized a woman laying on her back.”
The guidebook’s commentary thus far suggested this conversation could go in directions that could be too much fun to ignore. “I need to take a closer look at these rock formations.”
Suzanne joined the game, easily and with no obvious embarrassment. “Do you see any Tetons, grande or pequeno, out there?”
I pretended to count in an exaggerated fashion. “Dozens. Does that mean I‘m horny?”
There was no way on earth that straight line was going to be ignored. “Probably.”
The banter was relaxed and pleasant. Suzanne was a perfect traveling companion. During the trip from Salta, we discussed the scenery and talked about the various places we’d been like Bryce and Zion National Parks in the USA, northern New Mexico, southern Utah, and northern Arizona that had comparable rock formations. Both areas, here in Salta and in the Southwestern US, were deserts that featured sandstone prominently in their geology. However, we agreed that the striking difference was the difference in scale. The typical peaks in the Andes mountains were much higher than their counterparts in the mountains of the American Southwest, making the local scenery all the more spectacular.
We postponed any discussion of getting back to being detectives until after lunch. The same unspoken rules constrained us to small talk and avoidance of any discussion about Suzanne’s father until after our planned stop at Cabra Corral.
“This trip is a big part of what brings eco-tourists to Salta”, remarked Suzanne, returning to paraphrasing her tourist guidebook to share what she was reading with me. “Until a few years ago this valley was a hidden treasure. Now Northwest Argentina is trying to promote tourism as hard as it can. With almost universal access to the Internet, an amazing number of people all over the world get to see pictures of the area and want to come here. By European or North American standards, this is a cheap place to visit as a tourist and there’s a lot to see and do.”
I was feeling a little grumpy about driving an underpowered car, which was far too small for a driver of my height, over a badly maintained road. “If they really wanted to make this a major tourist attraction, a better system of roads would help. As soon as we leave the paved highway we lose most of the attraction for middle-aged and older tourists from the USA and Western Europe. Dirt roads scare them.”
Suzanne didn’t have to drive on the crappy roads we’d been on today. “I kind of like the primitive infrastructure. It’s part of the charm and novelty. We don’t want to see this valley turned into Disneyland South, do we?”
“Ask me again after you’ve driven on this road for 6 or 8 hours, especially in traffic.”
The side trip we planned to “El Dique” (the dam) at the Cabra Corral reservoir for lunch was the first destination on our planned schedule. We turned off from National Route 68 to Provincial Route 47 at the village of Coronel Moldes. A dirt road took us east to Cabra Corral, the largest reservoir in Northwest Argentina. We stopped for lunch on Route 47 at a restaurant called North Wind, with a beautiful view of the lake. We checked the menu, which featured fresh fish from the lake. At the recommendation of our waiter, we both ordered pejerrey, a local delicacy and a favored sport fish throughout the region. The fish, a vegetable, and a salad accompanied by a bottle of agua con gas made a great lunch.
This was where Saltanians came when they wanted to fish or play in the water of the lake. Catamarans were available to rent for the avid fishermen and women. Unfortunately, we only had time for lunch and a few minutes to enjoy the lake view before retracing our route back to National Highway 68 and continuing south towards Cafayate. We talked about some of the sights we’d seen during our lunch break. As soon as we got back to the paved road of National Route 68, the conversation turned to what our plans were for later this afternoon when we got to Cafayate and for tomorrow.
“What time do you estimate we’ll get to Cafayate?” I asked our navigator, who was holding the map.
“At a guess, I’d say 2 or 2.5 hours from now, which would make it around 3:30 or 4.”
“It’ll probably be too late to connect with the realtor in Cafayate when we get there, which will be right in the middle of the afternoon siesta break. I think we’ll want to call Senor Rodriguez’s friend this evening from the hotel and try to meet him tomorrow morning if that’s poss
ible. Do you have the piece of paper with his name and number on it or do I?”
“It’s in my backpack,” replied Suzanne.
“Since we have the free time this afternoon, do you think good tourists like us have to tour a winery while we’re in Cafayate?”
Suzanne read to me from the ever-present tourist material she had collected about Cafayate. “We should probably start this afternoon with the largest winery in Cafayate, which used to be called Michel Torino before it was bought out by a multinational corporation and became Bodega El Esteco. The winery is open until six, it has scheduled tours, and it bottles some of the best mass produced wine in Argentina.”
We arrived in Cafayate in mid-afternoon, at exactly the time our navigator, Suzanne, had predicted. We drove directly to the Bodega El Esteco winery and arrived just in time for the last tour of the day. The winery tour was led by the manager, who was fluent in English, which he spoke in deference to the presence of international tourists in our group.
The manager introduced himself to the tour group. “I’m not only the manager of the winery, but also double as the enologist responsible for making the wines, and triple as the viticulturist who supervises the planting and cultivation of the grapes. I was trained in wine making both in Mendoza and in the Napa Valley, and know both Argentine and California wines very well.”
He led us through the vineyards directly in front of the winery. “Let me introduce all of you to Malbec grapes in their growing fruit form. Please note how the grounds are kept scrupulously clean and the grape vines are carefully pruned and irrigated by modern drip systems.”
We walked briefly through the winery. “Thanks to our new multinational owners and their financial resources, we’ve been able to buy modern equipment. This has allowed us to pay intense attention to hygiene and cleanliness, which is the secret of making good wines every time.”
A tasting room allowed us to sample the premium Don David line of wines. “These are very good,” was the consensus of the tourists. We also tasted less expensive wines made from similar varietal grapes that were surprisingly good for the price.
We also learned a little about the city during the winery tour. The manager told us, “Cafayate may give you the impression of being a sleepy little town with a population of about 12,000 that time has passed by. But you have to look more closely at it to appreciate the real Cafayate. It contains vineyards and wineries, as you can see, with the remaining land looking unproductive and desert-like. At an elevation of 1,683 meters (about a mile), low humidity, mild weather, and cool nights, it has perfect conditions for growing wine grapes. The ideal conditions let us make very good wines from the grapes.“
One of the tourists, with a strong British accent, asked where the name Cafayate came from and what it meant. “The name Cafayate has its roots in the Quechua language but the meaning is controversial,” replied the manager.
He went back to discussing wines. “The Torrontes variety, a white wine, is the most common wine produced in this area. Most of the other common varietals grown in Argentina are also made in the many wineries of Cafayate. Some of the wineries here are unique to this city, while others are branches of well-known wineries from Mendoza.”
At the end of the tour we thanked the manager for his time. I showed him the photo of Suzanne’s father and asked if he remembered him visiting the winery the previous month. “No,” he answered, “I don’t remember him. But you have to realize hundreds of people pass through here and take this tour every day, so it’s hard to remember specific visitors.”
After the tour ended we drove to the hotel where we had made reservations from Salta. We found the Hotel Tinkunaku a block north of the central plaza in the middle of the city. It was old, simple, charming, no-frills, and inexpensive. Two small rooms, a shared private bath, and two double beds cost us less than $50 for the night.
The staff looked very Indian and spoke only Spanish. They were warm and welcoming despite my obvious language barrier, the impact of which was minimized by Suzanne’s fluent Spanish. We carried our stuff to the room, used the bathroom, washed up, and decided to go for a walk in town while there was still plenty of light to see by.
We made one stop en route outside to call Robert Foster’s real estate agent in Cafayate, Senor Sandoval. He answered the phone on the third ring and recognized Suzanne’s name immediately. The realtor told us he expected our call because Senor Rodriguez phoned him right after we talked with him in Salta. Senor Sandoval would be glad to meet us for breakfast tomorrow morning, at a restaurant called Terruno on the plaza on General Guemes Avenue, about one block from our hotel, at 9 AM. Muy bien.
Suzanne looked at me with a bemused expression. “What do you want to do for what’s left of today?”
I’d been thinking about exactly the same thing. “I think we should take a long walk around Cafayate and get to know the town. It’s interesting and kind of funky, very different from BA or Salta. And while we’re just walking around more or less at random, if anyone is trying to follow us they’ll be very easy to spot.”
We explored the city center of Cafayate, an area that extended about three to four blocks in each direction from the plaza. We walked to the north on Avenida General Guemes, which was also National Route 40, the major north-south highway in Argentina, running continuously from Tierra del Fuego to the Bolivian border. Four blocks of walking brought us to the bridge that crossed the River Chusca, the main source of water for growing all those grapes.
We walked back to the plaza on a parallel street. By then we had seen half of Cafayate. In addition to the wineries, the small city is also a center for artists and craftsmen who live and work in the region to sell their products to tourists and other customers. An art gallery on the Plaza contained some very fine pottery and equally fine examples of baskets, tapestries, hand-made jewelry, and woodwork made by local artists that we stopped to look at.
Suzanne and I were thinking the same thing. She put it into words. “The more we learn about my father’s business dealings here, the more I find myself thinking about how anything he did might help the drug dealers move their product north. All of these arts and crafts could have made a nice cover for exporting all sorts of drugs and other contraband from Cafayate to California. Even if he didn’t plan it that way, he had to be thinking of it when he walked around the plaza here.”
“I know, and there isn’t very much we can do to find out this long after he was here.”
I took out Robert Foster’s photo and showed it to four clerks and a manager at the store. Nobody recognized him from the photo. That didn’t mean much with hundreds of tourists coming through every day and a month having passed since he was here.
There were still at least two hours remaining to entertain our selves until dinner would first become available at 9 PM. Small towns like Cafayate are even stricter about eating dinner late in restaurants than the bigger cities like Salta. We scouted for likely looking restaurants and decided on the Pena y Parrillada de La Plaza for dinner. If the food were half as interesting as the architecture, we picked a winner. There was plenty of time to go back to the hotel for a belated siesta. Two showers, some snores, and a shave later we were walking towards the plaza and a drink before dinner at the restaurant we had selected.
The bar at the Pena y Parrillada was less than half full and we had no trouble finding a table at which to drink the local beer. Somewhat surprisingly in a city noted for its wineries the beer was very good. We were actually drinking ale made locally in a microbrewery called the Colorado Restaurant across the plaza on Belgrano Avenue.
We’d been sitting and talking for less than five minutes when a couple named Smyth, both about 60 years olds, obviously tourists, came to our table. “Excuse me, but could we sit down with you here? We heard you speaking American English and we’ve really gotten tired of having to speak Spanish everywhere we go. We just want to talk to somebody in American.”
My first thought was to ask myself whether we’d pi
cked up a new set of tails courtesy of the local drug industry. My second was asking whether I was getting a little too paranoid. Maybe a little chat would answer the question. I invited them to sit at the table.
We exchanged where did you just come from and where are you going after Cafayate questions? They had driven to Cafayate from the south, and stayed for a day in Santiago del Estero and a day in Tucuman before coming here. Both had interesting things to tell us about both cities, which were almost certainly places that we’d never visit. As we talked, my alarm bells were silenced as I recalled the famous quotation alleged to have come from Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!” In this case, “Sometimes an innocent-looking couple are just tourists.”
The waiter came over to tell us our table was ready for dinner, so we said our good nights and moved to the table. The menu offered a lot of choices of meats cooked over the wood fire in the local style. I chose the barbequed goat, which turned out to be wonderfully tender and succulent, while Suzanne had chicken, which was larger and older than the supermarket chickens we are accustomed to in the USA and was also tender, succulent, and free range grown.