Santiago, Chile, 2nd - 3rd January 2017

We left Mendoza in the afternoon for the drive from Mendoza to wards the border between Argentina and Chile. The idea was get nearer the border so that we could be near the front and beat the buses that would set out from Mendoza in the morning for the Chilean capital.

We left the arid plains around Mendoza and went straight into the mountains...there was no foothills but it was an abrupt change from flat plain to mountains. We passed Aconcaqua which at 6,961m is the tallest mountain in South America and the tallest in the world outside of the Himalayas.

We passed a lake created by a dam across the river above Mendoza which provides electricity, drinking water and irrigation for the crops planted around the city.

Where the river entered the lake, the muddy waters of the rivers mixed with the clearer waters of the lake and created a marked water line between the two bodies of water.

The road wound its way up the deep canyon that the river had carved into the mountains. It was a spectacular journey and one of the top five road journeys in south America. As we went upstream there was also a railway track making its way along the far side of the valley.

The railway track followed us for a long way along the valley. I wanted to see a train but there was one big problem. We saw a bridge with the support on one side washed way by a mountain stream with the deck of the bridge sagging across the gap at an angle of forty five degrees. It was obvious the there would be no train along this section of track.

The road didn't escape the force of nature either.  One particular river had washed way the road and the railway track. This more than a simple washout as it had carved a great V into the valley side. The temporary replacement road was taken up the tributary and across the arroyo with a temporary bridge and a rough gravel road with an intermittent covering of tarmac  as it snaked its way across the rough ground. It would be some time before a new bridge could be built across the new gap. One side of the former road bridge can just be seen here but the left hand side has disappeared.

The rocks were basically red, coloured by red oxide but there were plenty other colours on view although on a small photo it is hard to catch all the other colours in their full brightness.

The scenery was always changing and there was still a lot to see. The road had to negotiate several promontories and there were several tunnels in quick succession high up the valley side above the river.

Eventually the narrow valley opened out to a much broader valley with smaller hills aroundd us but we had  ascended more than 2,500m above Mendoza into the Andes.

We camped overnight at Uspallata, a small town high in the hills overlooking a section of the valley that was wider and flatter and allowed some agriculture. We had a fun truck clean which means that everything is taken off and washed...whether it needed it or not and all the lockers are cleared out, washed and repacked.

We couldn't take any agricultural produce over the border so we ate what we could and had to burn the rest. It was also an excuse to drink all the beer and wine that we could and we had a party as we deserved it after several hours of truck cleaning.

The sun rises the next morning was wonderful with the early morning light shining on the bare rock of the hills just a few kilometres way.

The next day we left Uspallata to continue our journey up the valley to the border.

The railway track followed the road up the valley besides the road. There was a lot of snow and avalanche protection built over the rails but it was all in a poor state of repair.

And then nearly 10kms from the border we joined the back of the queue to get over the border. We weren't allow to queue in the tunnel through the mountain, so we had to wait  patiently for a few vehicles to get through before the queue gain inched its way forward. But we had more views of the disintegrating snow protection given to the railway.

 We went through the tunnel and came out the other side of the mountain into a series of avalanche protections built into the mountain side. This was a view down the valley from inside the avalanche tunnel.

And a better photo without the concrete pillars in the view.

And a look back up the hill to the road as it swept down the hill side with the protection of the avalanche tunnel.

But there was little benefit in getting through the tunnel as the queues where still very long on the far side but at least the scenery was interesting even if we could see the queue parked nose to bumper all the way down the road.

The border took us nearly four hours to get through and we had jumped the line of cars as we were a truck and had a priority line reserved for trucks and buses. After the border and immigrtio controls, the road descended rapidly in a series of tight hairpin bends with 29 of them between the border post and the red building in the distance at the bottom of the slope. (I didn't count them myself but each one was labelled with a bit metallic sign descending from 29 at the top to zero at the bottom.

 Then we left the mountains and were into fettles allies and eventually rolling countryside as we descended into the capital of Santiago.

 The arid nature of the countryside was emphasised as patches of it had caught alight and had been burned but I was not certain whether it was intentional land clearance or an unfortunate accident but we were in the centre of Santiago by early afternoon.