Young Che by Ernesto Guevara Lynch

Author:Ernesto Guevara Lynch [Guevara, Ernesto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80645-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

Second notebook

At four in the afternoon, when the sun was rather low, we left for Ojo de Agua. Since Alberto had reduced his expectations down to a modest fifty-five kilometres, the distance, full of incidents, took four hours due to the many punctures I suffered. At Ojo de Agua I was advised to go and see the director of a small hospital and there I met the administrator, a Mr Mazza, brother of the senator who invited me to dinner. His family was charming and made me very welcome, in spite of having no idea where I was coming from – they empathised with the idea of my tour.

After I slept some eight hours, and having been well fed, I embarked on my trip to the famous Salinas Grandes, the Argentine equivalent of the Sahara. The unanimous opinions of my unofficial informers told me that with the half-litre of water that I was carrying I would be unable to cross the saltpans, but the well-shaken mixture of Irish and Galician blood that runs through my veins made me settle for that amount, and with it I left.

The landscape of this area of Santiago [del Estero] reminds one of the north of Córdoba, which is separated by an imaginary line. To the sides of the road there are enormous cacti almost six metres in height, looking like enormous candelabra. The vegetation is abundant and one can see signs of fertility, but little by little the landscape begins to change, the road becomes dustier and rugged, the vegetation begins to leave behind the quebrachos,3 and the jarilla4 begins to appear. With the sun now directly overhead and its rays reflecting up at me from the ground, it feels as if I am in an intensely hot oven. I choose the leafy shade of a carob tree to lie down in to sleep for an hour. I then get up, brew and drink some maté and go on my way again. The milestone on the side of the road welcomes me with the words ‘Kilometre 1000 of route 9’. One kilometre later the total preponderance of the jarilla begins. I am in the Sahara and suddenly – oh what a surprise! – the road that so far has had the privilege of being one of the worst I have ever been on turns into a magnificent cambered road, even and firm, where my motor delights in the easy ride.

But this is not the only surprise that the heart of the country has in store for me, because the fact that I can see a farm every five or six kilometres makes me wonder if I am really in that stark place. However, the ocean represented by the silver-stained soil and its green mane leaves us in no doubt. From time to time, almost like an ungainly sentinel, the vigilant figure of a cactus appears. In two and a half hours I cover the eighty kilometres of saltpans and then I get another surprise:

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