David Rauschenbach ("Leader by default")

My wife and I recently had the pleasure of vacationing for a week in Argentina. We decided to see what Doug Casey's La Estancia de Cafayate development had to offer, so we went along with their standard 7-day itinerary. We had a great time, and Doug's crew were friendly, smart, and fun, as one might have expected.

  
The city of Cafayate, a spring-fed oasis in the high desert of Argentina.

Being a close friend of Ray Swangkee, author of the website The Peacock, I thought it would be fun to compare my experience against some of his own criteria for The Ideal Place to Live. The perfect place to start seemed to be his book, Swangkee Fasting Sanitariums!, since one can hardly experience the uncorrupted natural beauty of Cafayate without imagining something like an Arnold Ehret style fasting sanitarium being built there some day, in order to support the production of supremely healthy people.

In the teaser for Ray's book, he writes:

"Most People have never Heard of Fasting Sanitariums, let alone Swangkee Fasting Sanitariums; but, Swangkee Means FIRST CLASS QUALITY, which Means that all such Fasting Sanitariums are Located in Natural Scenic Places, where there is lots of Fresh Clean Air, Pure Water, Abundant Supplies of Fresh Fruit Juices, Comfortable Swangkee Stone Domehomes with Polished Marble Walls, Onyx Floors, Agate Windows, Flower Gardens, Profitable $wangkee Fruit Tree Houses, and lots of Helpful People in Order to make Fasting SUCCESSFUL for even the Weak-minded People like you Know WHO, which includes MYSELF!"

So, here goes. This will be fun!

The road into Cafayate.

1. Fresh Clean Air

Cafayate has the cleanest air that I have ever experienced, which might have something to do with the 5,000 feet of altitude, proximity to the Andes, and the shape of the valley, which seems to ventilate well. Burning trash can be smelled on any given day, as in many other similar places in the world (which I now call "barking dog cultures"), but it is almost unnoticeable. The La Estancia development is even a pleasant job site to hang around, since it is a lot like a Swangkee job site, with quiet electric concrete mixers, some light truck traffic, and the occasional passing of a stinking foul truck. One might notice different sized concrete forms, however, since most of the Swangkee projects have wall thicknesses ranging between 2 to 3 feet of solid concrete. However, building accumulative wealth through permanent construction is an entirely different subject, and too much for this little blog, even though the Romans and Mayans knew all about it.

One can practically smell the clean air through this picture.

2. Pure Water

Cafayate is a natural desert, which is green only because abundant springs are diverted in order to water things. Without Man, it would all look like Death Valley. I was told the water comes out of the ground pH balanced, and it tasted pretty good. But mainly, it is quite plain to see that there is no industry up-hill from the water... just the Andes, with the acid/mercury rains falling on them, which acid/mercury rains are said to fall on even the world's highest mountains.

I study water seriously, but I take no measurements beyond what my tongue and other senses provide. So, it is just my "suspicion" that Cafayate has some of the best water that this world currently has to offer.

A spring waters this hill-side vineyard above Cafayate.

3. Abundant Supply of Fresh Fruit Juices

Now this subject is not one that is easy to talk about, because there's the Cafayate of today, which is your basic meat-eating local population; and then there is the Cafayate of tomorrow, which is to say that Casey & friends probably have their own idea about health and lifestyle, which some of us have heard bits and pieces of, even though it is no guarantee of things to come.

As for the way things are, the area has grown wine grapes for a long time. I asked around before my visit, and discovered that just because land is good for grapes, does not mean it is good for anything else.

The soil at Le Estancia is quite sandy. The olive trees transplanted to the street entrance area don't seem to be taking off, which is a point of discussion for the crew at the moment.

The golf course areas are being minimally fertilized with what seemed to be horse manure, which is probably fine for golf course grass. However, when it comes to producing world class fruit, I did not see any topsoil creation going on. Some people I know who pursue fasting-quality fruit spend multiple years in order to create 3' of mineralized topsoil the hard way. There's just no cheating nature... you get what you put in.

So ultimately, we'll have to wait and see what fruits the development has to offer once it's established. Then, we shall know them by their fruits. Fortunately, there is some goat manure to be bought from a nearby farm, which will help a little.

In the meanwhile, you can have fresh-squeezed orange juice anywhere you go in Cafayate. I never did find out where the oranges come from, but fresh orange juice happens to be my "thing", and I loved it. It's spring in Argentina, and the juice was mild (not to be confused with watery), non-acidic, and smooth. Argentina is a leading producer of oranges, but since I did not see any orchards in Cafayate, they must have sat on a truck coming from somewhere not-so-close.

The affordable labor rates in this area are probably what make it the most promising for growing future world-class fruit. As always, it is just a matter of inspiring it to get done.

4. Comfortable, Physically-Secure, Insurance-Proof Housing

Well I don't want to get into any of that, since health and diet is enough for one blog. But it will suffice to say that there is NO place in the world that currently has what Ray and I are looking for in terms of physical security, permanent construction techniques, sustainable living and working from home, an honest money/economy, and so on and so forth.

However, La Estancia de Cafayate seems to be the ideal place for a meeting of the minds on that important subject. Throw in my new acquaintances I made there, and a few hundred other Casey-style smarty capitalists, and the place might become a powerhouse of independent over-achievers, with the ablity to mobilize assets in any reasonable direction. It sounds like a powerful cocktail for getting the most out of the current order of things, which might be just a little while longer.

But then I would throw in Ray Swangkee, the "man with the Plan B", whose books contain the what, when, where, how, and why of planned city-states, break-away republics, or whatever one might call the things that end up replacing nation-states, which are falling under their own weight with no help from the likes of us. And, Ray's books explain how to get it all done, without going to war, borrowing any money, or making tax and interest slaves out of ourselves ALL OVER AGAIN.

An unlikely combination, or a match made in heaven? I have no idea — I just follow my gut on these things.

The road from Salta to Cafayate, which is symbolic of any future we might choose for ourselves.