Poetic places are hard to reach. It takes me 33 hours, four buses and a lovely motorised local to get to Cuesta Del Viento. I arrive at the wonderful hippie hostel Lamaral in the middle of nowhere. The centre is just before the Chilean border. Its name means “rise of the wind”. The strongest winds in Argentina blow here every day at 25 to 50 knots across the reservoir, which is only 20 years old.
The Jefe himself makes my bed in the simple accommodation. Afterwards, he hands me a beer. As soon as my Styrian room neighbour has emptied it, the whole colourful gang heads to the nearest restaurant for dinner. The party goes on for a long time. Stars are twinkling, wine is glowing, guitars are strumming and dowels are holding pictures of the wind on the walls.
The annual music festival is taking place in Rodeo with over 6,000 visitors. Despite an invitation from the DJ, I don’t make it there once in two days because of the good people in the hostel. There is no internet, no lockers – and nothing is missing. The nearest neighbour lives three kilometres away, the mini market is six kilometres away and the nearest large supermarket is 200 km south in San Juan. Without a car, you are more lost here than you have ever been in the last 15,000 kilometres – but there are always good people who take us everywhere.
The Paris Dakar passes just 40 kilometres away on the third day. We would only have to do without a few hours of wind. If I had a name as poetic as the wind here, I would be extremely pissed off if I were ignored. So we kite. Every day. Until we drop.
On the first day, after heavy rainfall the night before, the wind doesn’t blow until the late afternoon at a cosy 18 knots. I go out on Rancho Lamaral’s private beach, which is 700 m away and covers 13 m², and do a few leisurely laps in the panorama of 5,000 m high snow-covered Andean peaks between the slopes around the lake, which glow in all the colours of the rainbow.
The sun shines brightly the next day. The mountains to the north have cloud caps like Table Mountain at Cape Doctor. The best sign of strong winds, says Jefe Manuel – and he is right. At eleven o’clock in the morning, at least 20 knots of side-on wind are already blowing towards the main kite spot Zé Pequeno, three kilometres downwind. Together with my Styrian kiteboarding friend, I’m out immediately. There’s enough space to set up and a few plastic mats. There are a few nasty old roots and branches hanging upwind, where lines like to get caught. Small spiky bushes grow to leeward. The entrance is clayey and as smooth as ice. Otherwise everything is great.
The wind is blowing hard at the Cuesta Del Viento. On the lake it picks up another five to ten knots. As the afternoon progresses, it usually gets stronger and stronger and more and more stubborn. On some days, the wind fluctuates by 20 knots within a minute. It usually reaches its zenith around 17:00. It can then reach 35 to 50 knots. I’m lucky for three days. The wind never blows at more than a measured 40 knots – at least until we sneak off after a few hours of kiting in the late afternoon due to too much wind. I ride my 9er Rallye up to 38 knots top speed. Then full depower ground contact becomes rather scarce – and I go out.
On the third day, the wind kicks up right from the start with measured 25 to 35 knots. We ride the strong wind waves until the wind is definitely too much for my smallest kite with peaks of almost 40 knots. The GoPro hangs in my room neighbour’s kite. A crash in the strong wind breaks the mount. The last thing we see of my second GoPro in two years is a cut in my neighbour’s kite. That’s not important any more. So much has been broken on our travels and so much has been lost. We’re only sorry about the big air videos in more than 30 knots.
Cuesta Del Viento is very thermal, similar to Embalse Puclaro, just 200 kilometres to the west as the crow flies in Chile. Just before the top of the pass at 4,500 metres, I only needed two hours to get here a good month ago. Two motorcyclists manage the pass coming from Chile. A cyclist almost freezes to death in the fresh snow travelling in the other direction. In Chile, the thermal wind blows uphill to the east. In Argentina, it blows uphill to the west. There must be a black hole somewhere up there between the white masses of snow…
The last day says goodbye to the Cuesta Del Viento with a storm. Kiteboards take off. Beginners despair. Kites die. Locals, an Austrian and a Bavarian grin, although the 40 to 52 knots measured on the beach are simply unkiteable for our kiteboard sizes. At a big asado on the last evening, we stuff ourselves with the best meat and fish in huge quantities. The journey here was hard – and worth every metre. I happily move on to the last destinations of a great journey with a total of 15 kite days.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.