From Mendoza my destination was Santiago in Chile ready for my flight to New York, but by this stage in my travels I was way ahead of schedule and had plenty of time before the flight so I decided to stop at the little town of Uspallata. This is right on the edge of the Andes and only a short distance from Aconcagua, South Americas biggest peak and the bigest mountain outside of the Himalayas.
Uspallata by night
I had looked into a joining a tour to climb the peak but it was the end of the season and climbing permits had ended a couple of weeks earlier so I will have to save the climb for another visit. From Uspallata though I was able to make day trips into Aconcagua park and do some short hikes. On my first day in the hostel I met a Greman girl called Heidi who was planning to do the same as myself, so we headed out together the next day by bus to the park and did a short walk before heading down to the nearby town of Puente del Inca to see a natural stone bridge over the river (also visited by Charles Darwin so I learned).
Inca bridge
Then a quick visit to the cemetary for all the climbers who have died on Aconcagua and we thumbed a lift back to the hostel.
Aconcagua cemetery
The next day we hired bikes from the town and cycled into the desert to see a feature called 7 coloured mountain. I didnt excpect it to be too amazing but I was surprised to find that it really was very colourful. It was an hour and a half cycling uphill to get there but barely twenty minutes of racing down the dirt road back into town.
Desert Biking
Most of this stuff really needs pictures so I will update this post once I am able.
Heidi left the next day so I went for a walk into the desert nearby the hostel on my own, I was aiming to climb a peak and get views across the valley to the Andes, the peak I chose was a lot higher than I was expecting when I started and it took a full four hours of hard climbing to get to the top but the views were amazing.
View from the top - Uspallata valley and the Andes.
From the top I had hoped to find an easier route down as the one I had taken up was not suitable for descending and I was pretty much through all the water I had taken with me. I was out of luck as there were no easy routes down and so it took me another two hours to descend. After reaching the hostel I was told by the owner that I had walked into a military area, he was a bit anoyed as he said he was responsible for his guests, I told him that it was traditional to put up signs and fences as I had passed none, he wasnt too pleased. I am still trying to find out how high the mountain I claimbed was.
My last day of adventure in Uspallata was a return to Aconcagua park for a longer walk, this time up to Confluencia Basecamp, this is the first campsite for climbers on their way up Aconcagua and sits at about 3500meters, not too high but since Uspallata is only at about 1900meters it was a big height gain for the day and got me breathing a bit harder.
Looking towards Aconcagua
The views from here are amazing and just a short walk from the campsite is the end of a glacier that snakes its way along one side of the mountain. Unfortunatly there wasnt time to explore further and I had to head back down, even so I had missed the bus and faced with a long wait for the next one I thumbed a lift again and got back to the hostel a lot faster.
High altitude traffic jam
My next destination is Santiago and to get here I had to cross over the Andes, there is a road winding its way into the mountains and through a tunnel which eventually spits you out into the neighbouring country - the high altitude boarder post is interesting but what is far cooler are the 29 switchbacks that take the road down the mountain on the other side, at times I could peer out of the bus window and see the road looping around below me again and again as it headed down the slope. There are no barriers to the roads so if we had gone off the edge we wouldnt have stopped for a long time.
Long descent
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