Cholila: El Bolson to Los Alerces.

December 7, 2015

Robert Leroy Parker was born in Circleville Utah to a religiously devout Mormon family. His grandfather an elder in the Mormon church. It is therefore astounding that he turned out one of the most notorious outlaws of the old west.

As a teenager he fell in with a cattle rustler Mike Cassidy, following him so closely, he adopted his name "Cassidy". Sometime later he was employed in a butcher's shop and got the nickname "Butch". Thereby the "Butch Cassidy" name was coined.

He first come to note in 1893, when 28 years old, he was sentenced to three years in Rawlins Wyoming penitentiary for horse stealing. On his release, he continues an outlaw life, becoming a member of a train robbing gang, The Wild Bunch. Butch's trusted companion soon became, Harry Longbaugh, who's alias, Sundance Kid, he got after being in prison at the young age of eighteen in Sundance Wyoming. The governor is believed to have said on his release "I'm sure you will be a good boy".

The gang got good at robbing trains and went for bigger hauls, until wanted throughout the United States and train companies posted riflemen posses on trains waiting to apprehend the gang. There was one last job, a bank robbery netting a large sum, in which a member of the gang was captured in the pursuit that followed. Things got too hot for them to remain in the country. Cassidy and Sundance Kid fled to New York in late 1901, where Sundance met up with girlfriend Etta Place, and the three boarded a ship for Buenos Aires.

In Argentina they split up for a while. Butch Cassidy moved to the new frontier down in Patagonia, buying a ranch in Cholila on which, he built a log cabin in the north American style. He was much liked in what then was a new settlement. Though in a letter, he lamented that most of his neighbours only spoke Spanish and therefore he couldn't keep with local gossip.

Sundance Kid and Etta Place eventually joined him and together they returned to crime, going south across the Patagonia steppe to Rio Gallegos, where they rode into town and posed as wealthy horse buyers, while planning to rob a bank. They were believable and they regularly rode out of town in a mad gallop, so no one noticed on the actual day of the bank robbery them getting away with a sum of $100,000 in today's money, until someone entered the bank and found the bank clerks tied up and gaged and the safe raided. They had shot telegraph wires to give themselves more time to melt into the steppe.

Three months later they turned up at home in Cholila, where local police officer Edward Humphreys, a friend of Butch tipped the trio off about an order out for their arrest from the provincial governor, after a detective from the north American Pinkerton detective agency had discovered their trail, but as yet was unable to make the long arduous journey to Patagonia due to rain making roads impassable.

They fled to Chile and after Cholila, what became of them, is a mystery. It is known that Etta Place separated from them about this time, returning to the United States by ship to San Francisco. The two it is thought returned to Argentina and robbed a bank in Villa Mercedes, in the central province of San Luis, before fleeing back over the Andes. Then in 1908 two north Americans that robbed a mine payroll in San Vicente in southern Bolivia, and in a siege at a hospedaje where they were staying which followed, were shot dead by a Bolivian army unit and buried in the local cemetery, was thought to be how they met their end. However, the bodies were exhumed in 1991 and DNA tests proved no match to surviving family members.

A hit and miss affair it is getting money from cash machines here. Though, there is one bank that works all the time, except, don't even think of getting money from their ATM, Saturday afternoon, Sunday or Monday morning as they're usually weekend empty, before the armour plated vehicle and armed guards have been and refilled them with cash. Such is the case as I ride out of El Bolson this morning. I've bough enough on-the-road food for three days, that's how far the next city with a range of banks is, leaving myself with two-hundred and thirty pesos, in a country where a sandwich costs ninety, a coffee thirty and a beer fifty. A state of affairs I'm getting sick of and will, as soon as I've done the route I wish to do, make for Chile.

Patagonia is also more expensive than Northern Argentina. In the province of Buenos Aires, the same sandwich was seventy-five and coffee twenty-three; so, it's about twenty per cent dearer here.

There is the "Blue Dollar" exchange rate, changing hard currency on the black market for a fifty per cent higher rate, but that only works in the north. There were street money changers in Bariloche, that gave the same rate as banks, which is not much good.

El Bolson is a pleasant large town, which grew up from the late sixties when hippies flocked in to start an alternative self-sufficient lifestyle gowning all their own food. And today abounds with shops selling homemade preserves and also is famous for beer brewing. The whole place is green, enclose with trees, and it's name "El Bolson" means the bag, low down enclosed by steep hills all around. So a long descent when I arrived and now a climb back out.

I pass fat sheep grazing the entrance verge to a smart house with a rotund gaucho type looking on. Wooden houses remain hidden behind stands of tall popular trees on either side up the hill. And there's a bumpy paved shoulder part of the way, but the traffic not much to worry about, it not the Summer holidays yet; when, this area is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the country. And from past experience it is just a hassle with so many people here from Christmas to the end of January, with fatalistic drivers on the road. They all come in cars driving very fast to escape the Summer heat of Buenos Aires and treat the place, the normally tranquil lakesides, or village campsites as a disco, playing load reggatone noise on booming speakers all night until the sun is well up the following morning and leave their rubbish strewn behind them when they go home.

Chilean hauliers such as this truck use Argentine roads as it is the only overland route to the far south of Chile.

I cross the crest of the hill, descend and pass through El Hoyo, a mini El Bolson with more artisan shops. Then just beyond town there's big gravel chips scattered from an un-paved shoulder over the road. I run over one with my back wheel and there's a sudden hiss and in seconds the rim is rumbling on the road.

I can't think when the last I punctured. The last I'd a flat tyre was in northern Italy, due to the inner-tube giving out. This time I'm partly to blame, as I didn't pump the tyre up solid this morning. My pump I keep on it's frame bracket attached to a bottle-cage for easy access, went stiff and wouldn't work even after I'd taken it apart and reassembled it, but considered the tyre hard enough and anyway, didn't wish to take everything out of the pannier to get my new pump out, I keep as a standby, when the pump fails. Mini-pumps are small and light so I always carry two, rather than have one that suddenly doesn't work when I need to inflate a tyre. In short a spare pump.

Against a metal crash-barrier, the day thankfully neither hot nor windy, I remove all the panniers and fit my spare tyre and a new inner-tube. This time I inflate the tyre properly before remounting the panniers and continue.

Looking back toward Epuyen, having just joined RP71.

I reach Epuyen on top of the next hill in time for a lunch stop, finding bread, cheese, fine due to the coolness of the day, a tomato and a bit of wine leftover from the evening before, so a good lunch considering, rounded off with mate (mat-tee).

I read on the tourist interpretation board nearby "Epuyen means in the Mapuche language the meeting of two rivers, Rio Epuyen and Rio Mines. The town was founded in 1908. And since 1989 there's a craft fare the third weekend of January.

Dropping down into the Cholila valley, where famous north American outlaw Butch Cassidy lived 1902-05.

Soon after Epuyen I pass a left turn and the road straight on becomes provincial route 71. When previously I come this way, the tarmac come to an end and RP71 continued as a dusty unpaved road, but now it's tarmac and what a relieve.

The road meanders in lengthy straights with mountain to the right and steppe on the left, until a plantation of young fast growing pine trees on that side. Further it drops down with rich cattle pasture merging into bog to the left and thicket of rosehip shrubs to the right, before rising over a next crease to descend into the Cholila valley, a long pastoral valley with light green willows clustered along a riverbank and tall stands of popular tree windbreaks around scattered farmhouses, below dark wooded slopes and snow streaked mountains beyond.

Beyond Cholila village the road reverts to unpaved, or ripio as it is locally called. On this section which has turned sharp right into another valley, I've a light headwind, so every time a vehicle passes, I'm left in a blinding cloud of white dust blowing toward me. I pass the village of Rivadavia, a street at a right-angle off the road of wood cabins with blue wood fire smokes from stovepipes and a amacen (shop) by the roadside.

My timing is right for reaching the national park, Los Alerces after eight, when the person in a box at a control point will have finished for the day and so I won't be relieved of an entry fee. But the wind has got stronger and has got very cold. The ripio just goes on without the park entrance insight as it is nearing half past the hour.

Then think bugger it on coming to a wood enclosed track off, wheeling the bike downhill, it opens to a small pasture with an old wooden corral, beyond which is rosehip shrubs at the wood edge. I find a path into the shrubs and therein, a level grass area shelter by the shrubs all around, as if made for camping. Then push the bike in and pitch the tent.

Today's ride: 92 km (57 miles)
Total: 2,090 km (1,298 miles)

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