Rio Blanco to Argentina (with link to photos)
23.5.09
Well,
What a difference a day makes. The ride to Rio Blanco rated as one of our best days and it was immediately followed by one of our hardest from an emotional perspective. The day started late after the torrential rain throughout the night. We were well pleased to have slept in the shower/toilet block rather than being washed away with our tent. Word was that it snowed in the nearby mountains overnight and it felt like it. We took advantage of the break in the weather and headed off around 10:30am towards Juncal.
Rio Blanco is a beautiful little village nestle within the Valley of some very tall and dramatic mountains. It is home to many local Copper miners that work near the border. We started our climb passing many of these miners waiting for their bus and they looked at us as if we were odd-heading towards the Caracoles in this nasty weather.
The Anconcagua River was now swollen and gushing downstream. We passed many awesome suspension bridges to people’s homes crossing over this river. They were all swaying in the wind, that even the dogs looked terrified to cross!
Our plan was to ride to Juncal and set up camp. It was going to be cold and wet but it was 15km less of climbing the next day. The weather was not inspiring but fortunately we had a tail wind. It eased some of the burden of climbing. And fortunately there were road works and check points that continued to keep the trucks coming through in slugs. When the slugs of trucks did come through it was rather horrible and we normally just stopped and let them all run past.
As we climbed we had to ride through a number of Cobertizo’s (Literally ‘shed’) that were rock sheds/shelters to protect the road and cars from falling rocks. We rode through the first two and ‘Just Made It’ before a big truck came barrelling up behind us. We looked like camels making a runner at snail paced speed. On the third one we went outside and had some lunch (the usual bread and cheese). It was pretty miserable, wet and cold as we climbed up towards Juncal at 2220m. We were getting increasingly nervous as the weather was foul and there was really nowhere to camp out. We arrived in Juncal and found a nice warm cosy Refugio, which we discovered was owned privately by a hydroelectric company.
We weren’t allowed to stay there, nor camp, so it seemed that after the days climbing we had hit a wall. There was nowhere to camp and no public refugio. We told him our story and he said that we couldn’t camp anywhere near here. He must have seen a quiver in Anita’s lip as he offered to give us a lift at 4pm (it was about 230pm then).
This then caused one of our first most significant challenges to our marriage and relationship to date. I was keen to have a go at climbing what turned out to be another very very steep 600m up (we had climbed 800m up already that day) but Anita was adamant that she could go no further. I just wanted her to try, she put her foot down and said enough was enough for the day-take the lift offer, get some sleep and tomorrow we could ride down then up with less load. We had never intended to do this final pinch all on the same day and it was getting late. After a great deal reflection and consternation and frustration I resigned myself to the reality and the wise words of Stuart Bragg and let it go. As I had said to Rick Cunningham many weeks ago now, I did want to return from this trip with a wife!!!
And Anita has done so well, suffered greatly and her legs aren’t quite there yet for 1500m of steep climbing on a loaded bike in one day.
So we waited, and waited and waited until 4pm came. We loaded the bikes and Bob trailer into the back of the pick up truck and jumped in. Unfortunately within moments we realised the truck was heading back DOWN the mountain towards Rio Blanco. We were being kidnapped! Just kidding! We quickly asked them to stop, Anita almost in tears as she watched the days work about to unravel in front of her. They said they couldn’t go up to Portillo, up the snail trail, the caracoles...
So I jumped out and began unloading the truck....We were even more stuffed now, as we had this wall in front of us, we were just of the cusp of nightfall and there was at least 3-4 hours of crawling time in nasty weather.
Anita stayed in the truck and the two men caved in. I reloaded the bags and they turned around to do a detour and headed up to Portillo.
It was a very uncomfortable time as I have a suspicion that they were risking their jobs taking us up there. As it turned out, we climbed about 600m and drove about 10-12km and within about 20min we were delivered from the unforgiving world of Juncal to the high class ski resort of Portillo and the Laguna del Inca. We said goodbye and said many Muchas Gracias’s and gave them some monetary compensation for going out of their way for us.
As they drove away we rolled down to a clearly top tier ski resort for our last night in Chile. Now that we didn’t need to climb the snail trail we didn’t need a rest day to get to Argentina. The resort was open but on skeleton staff as the snow isn’t due to start accumulating for another 4 weeks or so (although they do say they are open from June – clearly it can’t be June 1). It was by far our most expensive night in Chile but the accommodation was by far the most comfortable and best appointed. Our Cabana looked out over Laguna del Inca, a most wonderful looking lake. From the posters in the main hotel, it would seem that Portillo is a resort all in a class of its own. There must have been about 30 signed posters from various ski teams around the world that came to stay and extolled the virtues of the snow and terrain at Portillo. (Hmmm, might need to come back to test it out....)
Unfortunately we had ignored one of the basic tenets of acclimatisation, we climbed (relatively) low and slept higher rather than climbed high and slept lower. This meant that while we were in the most divine of accommodation, we did not sleep so well. Ah, well, no complaints really when you consider we might have been back at square one in Rio Blanco if the two fellows had their way!
We woke to a most gorgeous morning on the 14th of May, our last day in Chile. The skies were clear and the wind had dropped away to nothing. We ate a leisurely breakfast, loaded up and headed up the hill to border control only 2km away. When the border control fellow asked why we didn’t have a Chilean flag to go with our Australian flag we replied we hadn’t found a place to purchase them to which he replied that we could in the shop just down the hill – so we did and an Argentinean flag too. (We now have an Australian, Canadian, Argentine and Chilean flag flying off of the Bob trailer). The dogs will be happy.
Border control isn’t the border though so we kept on climbing past yet another Cobertizo until at long last we reached the Tunel Christo Redentor at 3185m. Neither of us have ridden bikes at such an elevation. It was a glorious day to be riding amongst some very beautiful peaks in the Andes. When we arrived at the tunnel there was a maintenance building, we were asked to wait about 10 minutes and then they got out a big truck into which we loaded our kit for the 3km run through the tunnel and the ‘real’ border. You can’t ride through the tunnel and there is a good reason for it. The pollution was so dense that even we were coughing and splattering in the truck as we covered our mouth to get through the approximately 3km long tunnel. Horrible!
On the other side we were delivered into Argentina where we were greeted by the Nacional Gendarmeria (army/police). The fellow was friendly enough and gave us a slip of paper that we were to hand to another Gendarmeria somewhere down the road. He said many things to us but we understood just about none of it so we asked if OK to go, he said yes and we rolled away down the hill to Puente del Inca (bridge of the Inca’s).
It was a glorious downhill run, the gradient much more gentle than the Chilean side all the way to Puente del Inca. We had a short stop at the office of the Parque Provincial Aconcagua. We couldn’t see the highest peak outside the Himalaya but we could see the cloud formations it was creating so we rolled down to border control and officially left Chile / entered Argentina.
The whole border control thing was very confusing as in Argentina there was a Chilean border control fellow wanting to stamp our passports (I thought this had happened in chile??!!). We’re still are not sure if the passports were stamped correctly.
Anyway they let us through with these slips of torn off paper saying we had to hand them to the Gendarmeria (army) in quince (15) kilometres. Hmmm. We were stopping for the night in about 2 km’s. A problem for another day....we had made it to Argentina and I don’t think either of us could believe it.
We are now some 480km into our trip. Our rest day tomorrow will be spent walking up as close as we can to Aconcagua before rolling down hill from 2770m (Puente del Inca) to Uspallata (2020m)!
Stuart and Anita
Posted byStuart Kane at 11:10 PM
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