Across the border to Chile and Torres del Paine

We head for Chile again, and this time we do cross the border for a 3 day stay.  We are staying in Chile’s most famous, and beautiful, national park – Torres del Paine, across the Andes from Los Glaciares.

In Patagonia, once you stray from Route 40 – the national road that extends the length of Argentina – tarmac is soon replaced by roads of hard packed grit covered with loose stones.  We travel in a roughty-toughty explorer bus which has no problems covering the ground – unlike the poor touring cyclists we pass at regular intervals, their bikes laden with panniers front and back.  I’m oh so glad to be in that bus! 

But we still have to negotiate the border controls. Chile and Argentina may share a 6000km border, but the European concept of open borders has not taken root here.  The border control process is either a job creation scheme or represents national paranoia of the highest extreme. Luckily it doesn’t take 6 hours (as it does in Mendoza region) as most people crossing at this point are tourists, but we still have to

1)      get off the bus to have our passports exit stamped in Argentina

2)      fill in entry forms and customs forms for Chile

3)      drive through no-man’s land to the Chilean border control

4)      take all our luggage off the bus and have it x-rayed – making sure to first eat any apples lurking at the bottom of my backpack - never shall an argentine fruit make it over the border, or vice versa

5)      get our passports entry stamped for Chile

6)      get ripped off changing Argentine pesos for Chilean pesos at the coffee shop 

In fairness, no. 6 is our own fault as, for once, we failed to do any research either on exchange rates or to find out that our hotel in Chile does, in fact, accept credit cards – note to self, don’t believe everything you read on Trip Adviser.

At first glance Chilean Patagonia looks a lot like Argentinean Patagonia.  A few kilometres from the mountains everything is flat.  The Patagonian steppe is dry, arid and peppered with low-lying vegetation, mainly small round bushes and clumps of grass, which are enjoyed by a few fat sheep, guanacos (llamas without woolly coats), enormous rabbits – or hares – foxes, and ostrich-like rheas.  But, as with the whole of the Andes, most of the rain falls on the Chilean side, so gradually the steppe turns greener and more lush.  Chilean sheep require fewer square kilometres of steppe to graze on and fatten.   

Despite the green, it is still dry.  And Torres del Paine suffered major forest fires around Christmas that closed the entire park (nearly 600,000 acres) for 10 days and the area around the Grey Glacier is still closed. A helicopter bearing a water scoop lands next to us when we stop to pay our entrance fee and we see smoke rising in the distance during our stay there.  We also see the effect of the fires as we take the scenic route to our hotel. The lakes and mountains here are stunning, with black and grey crags towering above forested slopes – many now burned and blacked - in turn rising out of vast lakes of glacial blue waters.  The fires flashed over roads, rivers and lakes pushed on by the high winds which are normal at this time of year.  Only a change in wind direction saved the area from greater devastation.

Fortunately, the area around our hotel, which nestles below the Torres has not been affected by the fire.  We have not been backpacking our way round Argentina, but even so our previous hotels have been modest by the standards of Hotel Las Torres, our home for our 2 nights in the park.  There aren’t many options here, and given a choice between a smart hotel and camping, there’s only one thing to do. We know it’s going to be expensive – but we’re going to enjoy it.

Mendoza Mountains Part 2 - In the steps of the Liberator

Mendoza is just 6 hours by road from Santiago, the capital of Chile, and we considered making the full journey and spending a few days across the border.  But then we found out that the buses often spent another 6 hours at the checkpoint while the border guards checked every article brought into the country, and decided against it.

Instead we followed Route 7 to Paso de Los Libertadores, the border with Chile, and turn back. Our route traces that of General Juan San Martin at the head of the Andean army that liberated first Argentina, then Chile and finally Peru from Spanish rule. While they did it on foot or on the back of a mule, we are in the relative comfort of an air-conditioned mini-bus.  

The journey is spectacular.  The carefully cultivated vineyards soon give way to the barren, slopes Mendoza’s own mountain range before climbing into the Andes through the Uspallata Valley and skirting Mount Aconcagua, at 6,962m the highest peak outside the Himalayas.  Of course, it is shrouded in cloud when we pass by. 

Our first stop is the reservoir that provides all of Mendoza’s water and much of its electricity. It is surrounded by desert mountain scrub, a clear sign that without the Andes snow, life would be impossible here.  And there are real fears about the effect of global warming.  Each year there is less snow, which means less water.  The Mendoza River is in full flood at the this time of year, but the channel of rushing water, chocolate brown with mineral sediment carried down from the mountain, covers barely a quarter of the river bed. But the locals have developed ingenious irrigation systems and the few towns and villages we pass on the road to the border announce themselves with rows of trees and green fields standing out against the arid landscape.

General San Martin’s army was not the first to pass this way.  The Inca civilisation spread through the Andes from Cusco, hundreds if not thousands of miles north.  One of their favoured spots was the hot thermal springs along the route.  Legend has it that the bridge across the river here, Puente del Inca, was formed by a line of Inca warriors stretching out to form a bridge for their ailing leader to reach the healing springs.  In reality the remarkable bridge is calcified water, created by the minerals in the springs.  There is no public access to the springs – this ended in the 60s, when the spa hotel there was swept away by an avalanche.  Judging by the roadside stalls, they are now mainly used to calcify old trainers to sell to passing tourists. 

The lorry drivers who regularly use the route are a superstitious bunch, leaving offerings at makeshift roadside memorials that commemorate unofficial “saints”.  The signature red shrine of Gaucho Gil is one of the most popular, but he is unlikely to be canonised. A Robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, he was eventually sentenced to hang, proclaiming from the gallows his new mission to save the lives of those travelling the roads.  Another shrine to a woman who died in the mountains but whose baby lived by suckling at his dead mother’s breast is bizarrely marked by piles of plastic water bottles.

We manage the journey safely without their blessings, but instead of going through the tunnel to Chile, take a narrow, hair-curling dirt track to climb the 800m in 2 kilometres to the top of the pass where a statue of Christ marks the border between the two countries.  At over 3,800m and in dry, windy conditions the air is thin and scrabbling over the scree to get to the best viewpoints leaves you short of breath.  But once again we fared better than the Andean army, who were forced to eat onions and garlic to ward off altitude sickness.  It took them 22 days to reach Santiago.  I’m betting they won their freedom by breathing on the Spanish forces they met there.