ACROSS THE ANDES AND BACK TO CHILE

So once more I pushed my trusty rented 4x4 Toyota Hilux up across the high Andes, on the route leading west from Mendoza, Argentina and back into Chile. Actually, the above image is the view of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, as seen from the vista point only a couple of kilometers from the Chilean border.

But Aconcagua is not the only mountain of note on this very aerial crossing point. The above image shows another very high peak, seen from a distance through a high, lonesome quebrada on the Argentine side of the border.

The third picture will give you a bit of perspective on the depth of the valleys (or the height of the peaks, with the road visible at the bottom of the frame. This last shot was taken on the Chilean side, after passing through customs.

Anyway, It was a long, slow traversal of the mountains, partly due to the presence of many trucks, each one laboring up (and down) in their lower gears on the narrow, winding two-lane highway. Also, the highway departments of both countries were busy making road repairs. The other thing that made the drive go so slowly were the numerous (TOO NUMEROUS) police check points on the Argentine side of the pass. Such repeated (and in my mind, unnecessary) authoritarian incursions tends to be intimidating (at least it is for me), and I really got to a point where I wanted to just tell one of the Gendarmes to "stuff it," but my better self told me that such a negative act would only serve to land me in a very messy situation, so politeness was always the rule.

And thanks to my sense of restraint, I am now here on the Chilean coast, renting a cozy little cabaña in Los Tabos, a sleepy little resort town just down the road ( maybe 4 km only) from the late, great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda´s fabled ocean home at Isla Negra. Actually, I stayed here back in November, 2005, at the start of my last South American adventure, so I feel it is right that this one, my third excursion, ends up here. I will be staying here until the morning of March 8th, strolling the beach and doing little of importance before making the 120 km drive back to Santiago on that date. So this will likely be my last post before returning to that city, and then perhaps I will try to put up one last blog post from there to put a wrap on this journey. Remember, I fly out from Santiago on the evening of March 10.

So until that last post from the road, that´s it from here.

Chao, amigos.