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Published: January 29th 2015
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Alta Montana tour
The guide showed us various spots in the Andes and told us about various disasters and mysteries that had occurred in the mountains throughout history. I was intrigued and loved hearing the details and it left me with desire to see a lot of films and read a lot of books that I previously hadn’t known existed. Amongst the stories was one about a Uruguayan plane which crashed in the mountains and the survivors walked to the Chilean border to get help. We also heard about a plane crash involving a UK plane which in 1947 was carrying war veterans, pound sterling, documents regarding the war and gold. It came down due to bad weather. There were no survivors and years later all the bodies were found in perfect condition due to the cold conditions in the Andes, the plane was found but all the gold was missing. There are many conspiracy theories involving the Argentinian government, suggesting that they knew that there was gold on board and had therefore brought the plane down.
In 1861? there was an earthquake in Mendoza which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, destroyed the whole capital and
has been rebuilt and redesigned for rapid evacuation, there were numerous memorials all along the road side where cars had veered off the road in bad winter conditions, Aconcagua cemetery with lots of white crosses where the bodies of the workers on the railway are buried and now all the climbers who have died in accidents climbing Aconcagua since. We also travelled across one of the worlds’most difficult curves.
We were also kept entertained by various folk stories. One was of the Difunta Correa – a pagan mythical figure. Legend has it that a woman who died in the Andes due to lack of food and water and she was found dead with a baby still feeding from her breast, and the baby was found alive. All alongside the road there were barrels in tribute to her.
Alongside the road there was an old disused railroad built by the British which followed the road through the Andes for most of it and was used as a passenger train as well as a freight train. It was in 1984 that the last commercial train last used it. It was then destroyed by an avalanche which covered it with rocks
and it was never properly repaired. This was due to three reasons – the fact that at that time Argentinian and Chile governments hadn’t properly decided the borders between the two countries so therefore couldn’t properly assign reponsibilty to either country for its reparation. The other reason is that the truck drivers form the most powerful union in Argentina and as it wasn’t in their interest to maintain the railway they didn’t make it a priority and lastly the Argentinian government aimply don’t have enough money to reopen it.
We also learned about the animals in the Andes. There are wild llamas roaming around, foxes, hares, eagles and the one we saw most often during the trek was a condor – the guide told us about the legend of the male condor whose female mate had died so he himself commited suicide by crashing into the rocks. Apparently condors do this – when the female dies before the male, the male commits suicide rather than finding another partner. However, if the male dies first, the female carries on her life happily and meeting lots of different partners and having a great life.
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