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On Butch and
Sundance's trail
by Victoria Hislop
They were the quintessential outlaws - cowboys and bank robbers who
journeyed thousands of miles on horseback to stay one step ahead of the
law. But for a brief period in their lives, as I discovered, Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid tried to go straight and lived as cattle
ranchers in the rough terrain of South
America.
Along with Sundance's enigmatic girlfriend, Etta Place, they rented out
a wooden homestead in Cholila, Argentina, and regularly drove their
cattle over the Andes into Chile, via the Rio Manso Trail to Cochamo, a
settlement on the Reloncavi fjord. Here the animals were butchered and
the meat taken up the coast to the markets of Valparaiso and Santiago.
Newman and Redford inButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid : It's all right
-you won't have to dress up likethat
This pass, known as the Cochamo Trail on the Chilean side of the
mountains, winds its way over the Andes, across fast-flowing rivers,
through dense rain-forest and past thundering waterfalls. By the time
Butch and Sundance were riding it in the early 1900s, it had already
been in use for hundreds of years - by the Jesuits as they fled to
Argentina from Chile to escape persecution, and before them by the
Tehuelche Indians. Today it's used by a few gauchos - known in Chile as
'huasos'. But this sparsely populated area remained unknown to tourists
until a few years ago when it was 'discovered' by a German adventurer,
Clark Stede, who now brings intrepid horseriders to the region.
A veteran traveller and photographer who skippered the first expedition
to sail around North and South America, and twice rode a camel across
the Sahara, the aptly named Stede decided that his next adventure would
be to build a ranch in Chilean Patagonia. He spent a year in Argentina
learning how to handle horses and afterwards set up Campo Aventura,
where he keeps nearly two dozen horses which take his clients on nine-day
trips to Cholila or shorter treks to enjoy the wilds on the Chilean side.
On one of his many visits there, Stede persuaded the current occupant of
Butch and Sundance's homestead, the reclusive Aladin Sepul-veda (who was
born there in the early Twenties) to sell him the original door.
This evocative piece of memorabilia now stands in his office, side by
side with copies of the Pinkerton Agency's 'Wanted' posters and pictures
of the outlaws outside their home.
To reach the remote Campo Aventura, I flew two hours south from Santiago
to Puerto Montt which lies on the coast in northernmost Patagonia.
During my flight, the one constant feature of the landscape below was
the unbroken snow-capped spine of the Andean mountain range: on the
right I observed a changing pattern of cultivated fields, low hills and
sometimes a long, white ribbon of Pacific surf, while on the left the
rugged border with Argentina was always visible.
From Puerto Montt I travelled on a section of the Pan-American highway (which
runs thousands of miles from Alaska right down to Tierra del Fuego) to
Puerto Varas, a 19th Century German colonial town.
From here we went round the huge Lake Llanquihue which is dominated by
the snow-covered volcanoes, Osorno and Calbuco, and for the final hour
along a stretch of dirt road to the village of Cochamo where
the human population is easily outnumbered by the equine.
A few miles from here is Campo Aventura, where not only have properly
made-up roads run out but so have the power lines. The camp is set in
the million-acre Selva Cochamo (Cochamo Wilderness) which is virtually
untouched by civil-isation. Surrounded by
pristine Valdivian rainforest, it is home to more than 300 species of
plants and trees as well as pumas, condors and vociferous song-birds.
Each leg of the journey took me further from the grimy bustle of the
capital Santiago, where more than six million out of Chile's entire
population of 14 million people crowd together. And, although remote,
the camp's group of tidy wooden buildings - an open air 'dining room'
built around a big stone fireplace, bell tower and cosy, candlelit log
cabins to sleep in - couldn't have been more welcoming. Hundreds of
miles from sophistication but somehow closer to real civilisation, I
spent the first night acclimatising to the crisp air and the plunging
night temperatures, while marvelling that I could literally read by the
light of the moon.
Early on my first morning, as we breakfasted on freshly baked bread and
dark fresh coffee, three horses came galloping, unsaddled, into view,
driven up the valley by our gaucho. These sturdy but beautiful Creollos
Beating a retreat: Patagonia provided the perfect haven for bank robbers
gone to ground (Ranchero, Brochinchero and Sorsal) were to take us on
our journey into the mountains.
Once they were tacked up, with the softest of leather saddles, the three
of us - myself, Clark and a young German who was there to help on the
ranch for the summer - were ready to go. The horses were heavily l aden,
not just with their riders, but with spare clothes, sleeping bags and
food for the next few days. As the mist was replaced by sunshine, we
could see in the distance the hard granite of a glacier-crowned mountain.
The valley at its foot was our goal for the day.
After a few hours making our way along the grassy valley, it became
clear that we needed to cross the fast-flowing river. It dawned on me
that as there were no roads it was hardly likely that there would be any
bridges. But, apparently unbothered, the horses plunged in, the water
swirling around their girths as they picked their way over the slippery
boulders on the river bed, our heavily carved wooden stirrups getting
washed in the process. It was the first of many river crossings on our
trek and all three animals were to prove themselves as surefooted in
water as on dry land.
The rest of the day was spent in a continual climb following the trail
through the dense rainforest. For some stretches the pass had been
eroded into a dark gully perhaps five feet deep where the soft earth had
been worn away over hundreds of years by water, cattle and horses.
Other sections were ridged with thin trunks to make the surface more
stable, and in others the dark brown humus was replaced with sheets of
wet and treacherous granite over which the horses precariously skated
while we clambered on foot behind them.
At certain points we had to weave our way between huge ulmus trees,
avoiding the roots - some so massive they created arches high enough to
pass through. And where a trunk had keeled over to block the path, a
section one horse's width had simply been sliced out to allow us to
pass.
That day, as we lunched on the stony banks of a river (goose sandwiches,
fruit and water which we simply scooped from the river with our hands),
I decided that, as the horses had avoided dropping us in for an
unscheduled swim, it was time to test the waters for myself. Upstream, I
found a deep pool and plunged in.
My squeals of shock, as well as my 'it's very Chile in here' joke, were
drowned out by the deafening sound of the water (and probably lost in
translation anyway). I dried off in the sunshine, but my body tingled
for hours afterwards.
At dusk we arrived at the second of Clark's homesteads in La Junta
valley and, except for one ponchoed gaucho making the twoday journey to
his nearest shop, a small herd of cows and a lonely horse who had been
mildly excited to see us, we hadn't seen a soul all day. Here was
another group of beautiful log cabins. They were spartan but still with
the essential creature comforts - a wood-fuelled boiler to provide us
with hot show-ers, interiors embellished with traditional carvings and
curtains handwoven by the blanca, the gaucho's wife. A wood-burning
stove helped supply us with delicious meals and I have never eaten more
healthily.
One night it would be smoked salmon or mussels from the fjord, and on
another an asado (a traditional slow-cooking barbecue) of kid with
wonderful vegetables, all accompanied by good Chilean red wine and often
followed by some wonderful patisserie magicked from the simple kitchen.
The stretch of lush grass where this ranch stands was cleared for
grazing last century by pioneers --many from Europe. These 'gringos' -
mainly Germans, Italians and Welsh - were welcomed to Patagonia, and any
land they cultivated within two years became their own. Even today, the
term gringo is almost a term of
affection here.
Above La Junta there is an area of virgin rainforest where the trees are
as tall as cathedrals and thousands of years old - by our calculations
one ancient alerce tree had passed its 4,000th birthday. As we explored
the dark, damp forest on foot, we heard the roar of waterfalls and
having made our way across fallen, lichen-covered trunks we found one
plummeting down the vertical granite.
We lit a fire and boiled a kettleful of the clear river water to make a
cup of delicious smoky tea which we drank in the spray of the thunderous
waterfall. I don't suppose Butch and Sundance bothered to stop for a
cuppa, but I did wonder whether they ever stood still long enough to
appreciate this extraordinary landscape. Perhaps they did, and maybe
they would have extended their stay in Patagonia had they not been
tipped off that the bounty hunters were once again hot on their heels.
My return to Santiago was quite a culture shock, even after just five
days. It was Friday, early evening and rush hour. The traffic was at a
standstill and the Andes, although I knew they were there, were
invisible behind a blanket of thick smog. The city was
adorned with huge campaign posters in preparation for the presidential
elections, and we drove past a crowded political rally and the heavily
guarded British Embassy.
At the airport, my taxi driver dropped me at the wrong terminal, and I
had to run hell for leather to the correct one, catching my plane with
just minutes to spare.
I'll always wonder if this attempt to strand me in a foreign country was
the taxi driver's revenge on the English for keeping Pinochet under
house arrest. It certainly seemed a long way from Cochamo, where the
timeless landscape had made traffic jams and politics seem very remote.
Today there is a question mark over whether Butch and Sundance were
killed in a shoot-out in Bolivia or whether this was stage-managed to
allow them to disappear and reinvent themselves under different aliases
elsewhere in North America.
If I had been Etta Place, I might have persuaded Sundance to return to
the wilds of Patagonia. Although the terrain is rugged, even harsh in
places, it has a raw beauty which they, like me, must have been loath to
leave behind.
WAY TO GO
You can book the Sundance Pioneer Trail through Journey Latin America.
Prices start at £460 per person for a four-day horseback trek, including
transfers and full board accommodation. JLA also arranges flights.
Return fares to Santiago with Iberia cost from £553
from London, £551 from Manchester and £607 from Glasgow. Return flights
from Santiago to Puerto Montt cost around £215. Call 020 8747 8315. For
background reading: In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin |
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