Preamble to Aconcagua

Now, where were we? Ah, yes ... We had just had an amazing lomo alo pobre and camped by the highway for the night. Marius drove for another 900 km to reach Los Andes and from there the border of Chile with Argentina. The border is somewhere in a mountain pass, surrounded by very impressive stone peaks. To get there, you have to go up this road that has about 26km of very tight curves. The chilean customs is not, as you might think, next to the argentinean one. What you do is, you go through basic checks at the chilean border then, in about 20km or so, you find the argentinean one, in which your bags are checked, etc. Our problem was that we did not have an authorization to get out of chile with our car and as such, someone from our mule company was supposed to wait for us at the chilean border, namely Jose. Of course, Jose was waiting for us at the argentinean border, we couldn't get out of Chile, we couldn't walk for it and we didn't have any phone to call Jose.

In about one hour of so of talks and walking around (it is a customs office in a mountain pass, it was of course 9 pm - sun sets at about 10-10:30) we finally managed to get through to Jose and tell him to come and rescue the girls and the BAGS (omg so many bags!!) After much talk with the customs because the girls were getting out of Chile on foot which was unusual for that particular checkpoin, the girls were up in Jose's car and then safely in Penitentes, enjoying Jorge's cooking. Penitentes is called that way after the stone formations that guard it that are similar to the snow penitentes I showed a while back.

Marius and I returned to Santiago to return the car and get our moneys back - for replacing the clutch. We ended up spending another 4 hours arguing at the rental company, but we finally got most of them back, even though they were in form of a cheque. And it was Friday. Of course. The night before we could not find a hotel (again) and so Marius slept it a hostel - they had only one bed left, and again, it was 11 plus when we got there - and I in the car. In the morning, when I went to Marius's hostel to shower, guess who I bumped into?! Guess, guess ;;) Nevermind ... DAN, of course! He was leaving on the same day for Romania. The ticket change had cost him about 300 Euros, but he was happy to leave. He didn't even say congratulations for Tres Cruces. His voice trembled when he talked about how his little girl was asking for him. This would have impressed me at some point but now I was disgusted. Then he started saying how "time will tell who was right" and "what will we tell the people back home" sort of crap. How Dan got home and what happened is the subject of another post :)

We took a bus from Santiago to Mendoza, in Argentina, but decided to stop in Penitentes, where the girls were. They were staying at our mule company's skiing refuge, called Cruz de Cana. Our mule company is called Lanko. The company is run by Osvaldo and Jose. They are great people, even though remarkably different. Osvaldo si the calculated, mellow, kind type, whereas Jose is the forgetful, easily distracted type. They run Cruz de Cana together with Lucia, who is responsible for the bar, the rooms etc, and Jorge, (or Coky) who is the cook. Both Lucia and Jorge are students who only work there in the summer. In the winter Cruz de cana is absolutely full. In the summer it's just us climbers or tourists to aconcagua that keep the place barely running. Jorge's cooking is amazing!!! Wooha!! And Lulu is extremely kind and friendly.

There are three main routes and three main ways of climbing Aconcagua. The three routes are: the normal (easy in mountaineering) route (which we took), the Polish glacier (which I wanted to do), and the south face (south wall pictured - which i would love to do but it is extremely hard, so maybe in another life or so). As it is with climbing high mountains, you have to do it following a series of camps. For the normal route, the camps are: Plaza Confluencia (3300m), Plaza de Mulas (4300m), and from there on a couple more with the last two being (in general) Nido de Condores (5380m) and Camp Berlin (5700m). For the polish and the south face the only camp that I can remember is Plaza Francia (4200m) and Plaza Argentina. You can do the polish glacier from the normal route as well, taking a sharp left turn around Camp Alaska (5100m). All the routes start from Confluencia.

For the normal route, to get from Confluencia to Plaza de Mulas you have to walk the valley of the Horcones. This valley has more or less 25 km long, with a difference in altitude of 1000m. You can feel this difference when you get just bellow Plaza de Mulas where you have two massive slopes to climb. You have to carry a lot of bags up, of course. The weight ranges from 20 to 30 kg. To walk. For 25 km to the base camp. Wooohoo. This is where the mules and the mules companies come in. As I said, there are three ways of climbing Aconcagua: go with a full service company - including guide, all food provided, etc; go by yourself or employ mules to carry your load up to Mulas. If you go full service you will of course pay more but at least you don't have to worry about anything. However, expect to eat pasta with a bland tomato sauce for as many as twenty days. Furthermore, you have to do everything with the group. If you go by yourself you will have to carry everything up that bloody valley. The whole 8-9 hours of it. Plus, you still have to pay for the toilet at Plaza Confluencia and at Mulas. There are ecological toilets both at Plaza de Mulas and Confluencia and they MUST be used even though they stink to high heaven at Mulas. One thing that I liked was that they change the camping spot at Confluencia to allow the vegetation to regenerate, good for them!!!

What we did was to hire Lanko to take care of the luggage to Plaza de Mulas. Also, at Plaza de Mulas we were met by two great guys, Carlos and his wife Vanessa, who take car of the Lanko tent and toilet there. If you go with a company they will also have a reserved tent space in their name. DO NOT however, pitch your tent next to the mess hall. Anything is better that than, since you will not be able to sleep if there are some argentinians there enjoying some mate de hierbas or some romanians having their usual squabble. They will talk you to death. Also, DO NOT assume that you can negotiate with the muleters on sight and get a better price (as some romanians thought they could, sheesh). They will not negotiate because they are working for their companies. Furthermore, the competition among companies is fierce, so the prices are all right.

As I said, Osvaldo and Jose are really nice. They will even show you around Mendoza and help you with the formalities for getting a climbing permit. The climbing permit for Aconcagua costs 330 US (for foreigners) or 300 pesos for argentinians. Write to Osvaldo at osvaldocarbahal@hotmail.com or at info@lanko.com.ar