During our Salar de Uyuni tour, we met 2 French guys who had recently done a trek in a less touristy part of Bolivia. They highly recommended the trek and it sounded interesting, so we contacted David Lebras from San Pedro Tours and made our way to the town of La Higuera (the town where Ernesto Che Guevara was executed). The journey to get to the town was a journey in itself!… but we'll leave that for another post. :)
The trek we did follows the last 12 days of Che's life. Just to put us in the story: Che originally went to Bolivia (with about 50 men) to initiate a revolution in South America. They chose Bolivia because it was a good strategic point to access surrounding countries (Chile, Peru, Columbia, Brazil, …). After 11 months of guerrilla fighting, he failed to rise the population up against the government and in October he arrived in La Higuera to find out that the army had learned of his whereabouts and were waiting for him (1800 army men against 17 guerrillas left). The trek we did was only 4 days, but Che followed approximately the same path in 12 days.
Day 1: The Escape From La Higuera
Our Story: On the first day we set out into the Canyon de La Higuera and after a couple of hours, we arrived at the junction to the San Antonio Canyon. From there we walked to the Rio Grande and set up camp (hammocks) on the bank of the river. The distance was about 13-15km downhill, from 2000m to 700m (about a 5.5 hour walk). For dinner, we learned to cook a steak in the campfire on a slab of rock from the Rio Grande, and David gave Dom some tips on how to chop wood with a machete :).
Che's Story: Che never went to the Rio Grande - at the junction, he took the San Antonio Canyon to double back to La Higuera. Taking the San Antonio Canyon proved to be one of Che's mistakes, as it turned out that the army was not covering the Rio Grande area, and was instead mainly concentrated around La Higuera and vicinity. The route to the Rio Grande was how the last 10 guerrillas escaped after Che was captured.
Day 2: San Antonio Canyon
Our Story: We took our time in the morning and David taught us how to make beignets for breakfast in the fire. We packed up camp and stopped on the shore of the Rio Grande for a quick swim before returning to the San Antonio Canyon junction to continue Che's story. In total, it took us about 5 hours to walk to our next encampment which was in the canyon, near the caves where Che had to hide and wait for the army to leave. For dinner, David taught us how to make bread (from scratch) over the campfire. We were impressed - it's actually fairly easy, and really good!! That night, around 2am, we were awoken by a bit of rain so we were forced to get up and relocate the 3 hammocks such that they were stacked, one on top of the other, beneath a tarp - that was was interesting! We opted for a midnight snack and ate more of the campfire bread before going back to bed in our newly fashioned "bunk-hammocks".
Che's Story: During their escape through the San Antonio canyon, Che's group eventually stopped at a location that he deemed safe. To his surprise, around noon the next day, the army showed up pacing back and forth along the canyon trail only a few meters from their camp. Over the next 4 days, they counted around 120 army men in the area (vs their group of 17 guerrillas). At one point, a shot was fired and army was sent to his area to investigate. Luckily, before any confrontation could happen, the radio sounded out explaining that one of the army's rifles had misfired - the investigation party was called back.
