They characterise almost the entire continent, leaving some people in awe and others in peril. There is no mountain range quite like the colossal Andes. Gwynne Hogan explores the legends and tales of the Andes near Mendoza.
Bribed by a glistening twenty ounces of gold, a lowly mail courier was convinced to do the impossible: cross the Andes from Mendoza to Santiago de Chile on foot in late autumn.
Halfway across the pass a blizzard began. In order to brave the storm, the courier walled himself up for eighteen days in a tiny Casucha, one of the small cabins lining the pass that Charles Darwin would later describe as "caves, or rather dungeons".
Having run out of food and supplies, he decided on the nineteenth day to make a break for it and fought his way through the storm across the pass into Chile. A year or so after the experience in 1849, the courier would comment to a fellow traveller that no amount of gold could "induce him to renew the attempt," not "after the terrible experiences he had already gained."
This courier was not the first nor would he be the last to make the terrible trip. Decades earlier General Jose de San Martin performed one of the most epic crossings of the Andes Mountains of all time. In January of 1817, he hatched the plan to catch the Spanish troops in Chile off-guard by attacking not from the waterfront as was anticipated, but from behind. During the twenty-one day trek, the troop lost more than 1,000 soldiers and half of the horses they had with them.
Despite these casualties, the meagre and exhausted army still managed to defeat the enemy, sending Spaniards fleeing from their Chilean strongholds. This heroic deed has branded San Martin's memory into the pages of history books and onto the names of main streets throughout Argentina.
Two years later, the Spaniards still had not incorporated 'crossing the Andes' into their book of tactics to watch out for, and General Simon Bolivar was able to liberate Colombia by crossing in from Venezuela. Even before the conquerors however, insatiably curious scientists like Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin traversed Andean peaks and passes seeking to document new species, and to discover proof for hair-brained theories like evolution. High up in the mountains Darwin found petrified coastal trees and shell fossils, proof that the mountain had once been alongside the ocean. In the early 1900's American outlaw Robert Leroy Parker, more commonly known as Butch Cassidy, hid out within the foothills in Patagonia and was eventually shot in Bolivia after one last desperate rush for the gold.
The legends of men are made and destroyed within Andean cliffs. There is no place where this is more clear, than on the peaks of Aconcagua where decades of the mountain's victims lay frozen in time along the trail to the summit. One climber describes the corpse of such a victim, "the dead guy's grave is located at 5,800 meters... The grave is just around the corner from our tent. The corpse is covered by a pile of rocks and some discarded mountaineering gear." The bodies of these men and women remain intact as if they had died yesterday, yet the memories have long since been blown away.
One unshakable memory, however, and the subsequent making of perhaps the most epic Andean heroes of all time, is the tragic story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. In October of 1972, a private jet carrying a Uruguayan rugby team as well as some their friends and family members (45 in total), crashed into jagged wintry cliffs at around 3,600 meters. Twelve passengers died on impact, and another six passed within the next few days. With little to no equipment to deal with the harsh Andean conditions, the survivors hid out in the broken fuselage surviving on candy bars and bottles of wine, and then eventually the bodies of their deceased friends, unkind reality that later made the movie version of the story such a success thanks to its sensational tagline "Rugby players eat their dead". Years later, survivor NandoParrado helped illuminate the connection between their ability to stay alive in the Andes partly thanks to the consumption of human flesh, and his vocation as rugby player: "[Rugby is] a game that's misunderstood by people who don't play... They don't understand the team spirit, the sacrifice you make of yourself for another player so he can score. We survived from that spirit. If we had been soccer players, we would have died."
On the eighth day, the shaky reception of a transistor radio told them that the search had been called off—it had proved impossible to find a white plane amidst miles and miles of white snow. An avalanche killed eight more on the sixteenth day. Finally after waiting for the worst of the extreme winter weather to pass, three of the survivors set out to look for help. Walking westward for days, and resting under the shelter of a patchwork sleeping bag the group had fashioned at night, the three finally found signs of human life leading to the eventual rescue of the remaining sixteen passengers after two and a half months stranded in the Andes.
Like the mail courier two centuries before, sheer will power and the intense animal instinct to survive were the only things that kept the remaining passengers of Flight 571 from being swallowed up by the Andes entirely. Those who prove themselves strong enough to overcome the extremity of Andean hardship are not soon forgotten.
Andes vacation reading
Here are a few top reads for Andes buffs over the holiday season.
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read.
Let's face it, the author would have really had to consider a new profession if he had managed to ruin this gripping tale of the Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the Andes.
The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel Diary by Christopher Ishwerwood
Searing and unsentimental this Englishman's account of his experiences in Latin America in the 40's is not your traditional travel log.
The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
Originally published in 1979, this travel diary recounts the author's epic train ride from Boston Massachusetts, to the Southern tip of Argentinean Patagonia.
The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming
For those looking for a more historical option, the Conquest of the Incas is a readable and intriguing account of this great civilization's decline.
Crossing the Andes
Crossing the Andes by car or bus may not take as much commitment as it does by horseback, but Gwynne Hogan explains the many problems facing even auto mobilised vagabonds.
The jagged Andean peaks flanking Mendoza's western side remain one of the most sublime and impenetrable regions known to man. As the world's longest continental mountain range, the Andes extend for more than 7000 km, and bisect seven South American countries. Just west of Mendoza sits Aconcagua, the range's highest peak, which summits at a treacherous 6,962 meters making it the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. As such, mountaineers flock from all over, propelled by that slightly suicidal human desire to conquer and traverse the unknown.
For a lazy man's alternative to experiencing the Andes, one might consider crossing Paso de los Libertadores, a road that has functioned since colonial times and connects Mendoza to Santiago de Chile. One of the most affordable ways between Argentina and Chile, this winding pass is highly trafficked by trucks carrying merchandise, blunderingly top-heavy buses, as well as passenger cars. Route 7, the road that leads from Mendoza to the Andes pass, climbs gently in altitude through rural towns, tree lined boulevards, and acres upon acres of vineyards. Just before hitting the border, the road grazes Puente del Inca an electric sulphurous yellow, naturally formed rock bridge. Snow-glazed peaks cradle the route on all sides, and after crossing the border into Chile comes Los Caracoles [the Snails], a series of 20 hairpin turns that give even the wildest drivers hesitations.
I recommend this journey for all. Sure, it may be more time consuming than the hour long flight to Santiago. But in an airplane one loses the texture and trauma of the Andes. All landscapes are simplified into a short movie version of the actual experience. As is true in any comparison between a book and its movie sibling; the book may take longer, but it is almost always worth it. Should you decide take the bus or car route here are two pieces of advice: don't sit in the front row of the bus, and make sure your gas tank is full.
Both of these nuggets of information come, of course, from direct experience. The first, I offer you as help for choosing your seats on a double-decker bus. You may realize when you go to purchase your ticket that the front row seats on the second story are not reserved. If your brain works at all like mine did on my first border-crossing experience, you're thinking, "Oh wow! Those must be the seats with the best view!" Maybe a nagging voice in the back of your head says, "That's strange, then why are they the only ones not yet reserved?" The answer to that little voice is that those are the seats you're most likely to die in, or at least this is the slightly superstitious common knowledge of the local populous. You'd think that if your bus went cascading off a grim Andean cliff-side it wouldn't really matter which seat you were in. However, in this case I prefer to trust the local consensus.
Now as you embark on your Andean journey, you'll have the tools necessary to decide whether you want that panoramic shot to be the best of your life. If you do however arrive at the moment to reserve your seat, and the front two rows are filled up; you have the right to scoff/cough under your breath "gringos" as you pick your seat a conservative three or four rows back.
Secondly, if you go the automobile route, be sure you have gas. This may seem self-evident, and to most reasonably functional beings it would be. However, when your lovely, charismatic, friend/driver parks his 1972 clunker truck in a Chilean gas station, next to a Chilean gas pump right before you start a six hour drive to Mendoza; do not assume he is filling up the tank! In my case, despite the fact that we had performed the above action, leading all seven passengers including myself to believe we were ok on the gas front, it turned out friend/driver was just stopping for a quick candy fix-- next to a gas pump.
The gravity of our situation became clear to all rather suddenly after making our ninth or tenth hairpin turn on the snail bends. Although the hearty, antique truck had been chugging away at a meagre snail's pace anyway, all of a sudden we seemed not to be moving at all. And indeed we were not, as the poor dried out engine belly had been running on empty for a few kilometers now. The moments that followed were wrought with tension and curses; it was his fault, it was your fault, it was mine. After about ten minutes of this foolishness it collectively dawned on us, that playing the blame game was a futile exercise since we were all equally screwed. This realization and the sinking winter sun brought a chill to our bones.
This situation could have easily turned sour. I'm suddenly thinking about those poor Uruguayan rugby players in the seventies who had to resort to cannibalizing the bodies of their dead friends in order to survive a plane crash. If you let them, these peaks will turn respectable humans into desperate and gruesome versions of themselves. While the girls huddled together in the back of the truck under blankets and coats, the boys rubbed their hands together over the engine, shivering and cursing under their breath. I begin to wonder whom we will have to eat first.
A passing trucker with a spare jug of gas interrupted my nightmarish daydream. Spout in place, antique truck slurped it up like a hungry baby. We had just enough fuel to reach the border, then after clearing the summit, we turned off the engine and coasted down the curves until we came to a service station. Disaster averted.
The highlights of the Andes in a fly by view
There is a quick way to cross the border, although it's not everyone's favourite... Amanda Barnes takes to the air and amid the turbulence and ear popping, sits on the edge of her seat for good reason.
I love a bit of turbulence in an aeroplane – it's like getting a fairground ride thrown in for free. The more bumps, bounces and stomach flips you get, the better value I feel I've got for the ride. And the flight between Mendoza and Santiago usually doesn't disappoint. No surprise as you are crossing one of the highest mountain ranges in the world.
Although many people go cold at the thought of turbulence on a flight, not even the most nervous traveller can deny the sheer beauty of this flight. Make sure you book a window seat because the views are to die for (excuse the pun).
As the plane takes off from the flatness of Mendoza, it gently rolls up the foothills of the Andes until you reach height and start to cross over the Andes. Everything outside goes from green, to brown, to red, to blue and white. Passing slopes, dips, curves, jags, basins and glaciers – it is an ever changing picture and you feel quite privileged to see these virgin lands that not even San Martin ever traversed. Without a doubt certain parts are completely untouched by man, guanaco or rugby players. It's a really stunning flight. That is, until you descend back down into the smog of Santiago.
Andes by foot: Climbing Aconcagua
We are well into the season for climbing Aconcagua (November to March) so if you are up for the challenge then there are a few things you need to start getting sorted out. First of all a permit is required (www.aconcagua.mendoza.gov.ar, 261 425 8751), for either 3, 7 or 20 days. If you want to climb the summit then the 20 day permit is required, it costs $3000 for foreigners and $720 pesos for locals in high season - this includes your emergency services insurance. The list of equipment required is endless and temperatures towards the summit can get down to -30C so be prepared. If you are heading for the top it is advisable to take a guided tour, unless you are a highly experienced climber.
