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Published: January 6th 2009
Argentina to Chile
One of the roadside shrines. I particularly liked the Elvis doll. I am not too sure what that is in thanks for. Maybe he is alive and well and pumping gas in Argentina?We have arrived safely in Chile and into the Elqui Valley. There is no internet here at our hotel so I will have to wait a while until I can post this.
But before I tell you about the valley and the places in it let me tell you about our trip over the high pass from Argentina to Chile. Brian is a very good driver and fearless on dirt and gravel roads and drives them all like a rally driver but even he was tired and stress be the end of this trip. A real “white knuckle drive” .
It is very long for one thing over 200kms and most of it is not sealed. For another it is through harsh barren mountain rising steeply to almost 5000 metres or about 16,000 ft. The road is cut out of the hillside and is loose dirt and rock. It is very narrow and meeting a car going in the opposite direction is fairly hair raising as the road drops off down steep cliffs ( 2000 meter drop for example) and there are no safety barriers and only just enough room to pass 2 cars. The temperature dropped from 30
Argentina to Chile
On the way up to the pass degrees at the bottom to 5 degrees at the top and the wind threatened to blow you sideways at any moment. We had to stop a few times to move rocks off the road from rock slides. We looked nervously at many boulders poised to fall any moment.
The trip takes at least 5 hours to drive , if you push it and you must because at one end is the Argentinian customs and at the other the Chilian customs. At the Argentinian customs thing go fairly smoothly taking about an hour depending on traffic but things got really snarled up at the other end. We saw the queues when we passed into Argentina and sort of expected a delay. We were lucky in that it only took 3 hours to get through but for most of that time nothing moved at all. There is no food or water available for the whole trip and none even at the custom house so for families with children this was very trying. We came prepared but even so by the time we got through and arrived at our hotel at 8pm we were exhausted and felt covered with dirt.
Brian
Argentina to Chile
The ice is beautifully wind sculpured into peaks. says this was the wildest drive he has even done. The surface was so loose that if you braked too hard you could slide right over the edge. Even driving as fast as he did he was still overtaken by mad Argentininan's usually on blind curves uphill.(Obviously we had filled up with Fangio gas before we attempted this drive) There were even cyclists doing the trip and I can't imagine how long that took. Brian wants to mention that he was driving a Toyota 4 door saloon car but we wished we had had the X3 which would have loved the challenge.Not the M5 which would have bottomed out on the first curve. Brian thinks that this is a perfect road for a Clarson Top Gear episode.
So from the top of the mountain to the valley. This is a truly beautiful spot and our hotel, which is a collection of cabans round a swimming pool. We are at Pisco Elqui. A small town that was renamed from La Union in 1939 to thwart Peru's efforts to gain exclusive right sto the name of “pisco” the South American drink. It is made here and ther are a couple of
Argentina to Chile
The views are spectacular but to enjoy then you need to take your eyes off the road or in my case open my eyes. distilleries that you can tour.
The other claim to fame for this area is that it was the birthplace 9 or at least Montegrande the next village was) of Gabriela Mistral the Chilean writter who won the 1945 Nobel award for literature. He hauntingly beautiful poetry reflects this country so well.
The alley here is irrigated by canals and is full of argricultural production growing papayas, custart apples, oranges, avocado and vast expanses of grapes grown to produce pisco. Due to the fierce winds the vines are all covered by protective netting whihc does detract fromt eh beauty to some extent.
Oh yes back in the 1960 a group of hippies came here to settle because they believed that the Age of Aquarius had shifted the earth's magnetic centre from the Himalayas to the Elqui Valley. Personally I think that this was a warmer palce to settle than in the Himalayas!
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