No, this is not an Ashgrove Baptist grudge match. From Sunday to Tuesday, the two Daves hit the road and took on the mighty Andes mountains. Specifically, the highest mountain in South America, Aconcagua. We weren't foolish enough to try and get to the top (about 6,700m above sea level), but we did get up to the southern face of Aconcagua, to a height of around 4,125m.
We don't have any photos uploaded yet - we'll try to get some online in the next couple of days. In the meantime, you can check out the (incomplete) GPS recording of our hike. The first day is fairly complete (up to the point where the valley splitts), but my iPhone battery was severely depleted for the second day so the trail is incomplete - we just recorded spot-points along the way. The link is here:
Day 1: Mendoza to Confluenzia
After waking up at the crack of dawn, we caught a 4-hour (plus or minus) bus ride from Mendoza to Puenta del Incas, high in the Andes mountains. After a picturesque but slow ride we arrived in a small town which seems to purely exist for the tourists and people in transit to and from Chile. On the bus we had met three Israeli guys (Roie, Shai and Daniel) who were doing exactly the same hike as us, except that they had decided to pay for a guide. We, of course, we cheap and were told it shouldn't be necessary for our particular destination anyway.
From here we began our first day's hike, a distance of almost 10km, ascending around 600m. We started out well, chugging along at a reasonable pace. The Israelis soon left us in the dust, but that was fine with us. After crossing the main river over a cool-looking bridge, Dave Cohen spotted a mighty Condor in the mountains above us. Check one childhood dream off the list for Snr. Cohen.
After that, the slope increased significantly, and our rate of progress decreased in a roughly linear ratio. It turns out that lugging 15kg of baggage seriously increases the difficulty of climbing mountains. We had already left quite a bit of our extra weight in Mendoza, but we were wishing we'd left more pretty quickly. By the time we got to Confluenzia (the first base camp, and our destination for the day) it was 4 hours, about 10 litres of sweat, and 4 seriously tired legs later. Dave Cohen in particular was feeling the altitude, but the medic at the base camp checked him out and gave the OK for continuing our journey the next day.
Day 2: Confluenzia to Plaza de Francia
After getting a surprisingly reasonable night's sleep (sleeping bags in a tent at around 0 degrees celcius) we had breakfast and set out for Plaza de Francia, which is at the base of the southern face of Aconcagua. This time we were just carrying small day-packs rather than our relatively massive backpacks. A very good thing since we would be hiking for around 8 hours, and increasing our elevation by another 900m. We took our time, both to admire the spectacular views and to preserve our energy, and the Israeli boys left us behind fairly quickly once again. We got into a rhythm however, and, 3 hours and several stops later we were very surprised to discover that the group behind us was actually our Israeli friends. They had taken a different route and we had actually overtaken them along the way! Ha! Who needs a guide anyway?
About 10 minutes later we arrived at our destination, at an elevation of 4,125m above sea level. While we ate our lunch and tried to stay out of the wind we admired the view and chatted with another group of hikers who were hoping to make it to the summit sometime in the next week or so. Good luck to them, it should be a pretty good challenge!
By this point, David Cohen had developed a pretty good altitude headache, so we took it pretty slowly on our descent. As it turned out, our return journey took a completely different path to the one we had come up on. Given that we had walked up a closed valley and the only way out was through Confluenzia we weren't too worried. However, a hour-and-a-half later we still hadn't recognised any of the terrain, and a little disorientation had set in. A quick prayer later, we continued on and met a guide who was returning to Confluenzia from the next base camp up the mountain at exactly the right time to point us on the right path and we arrived back at Confluenzia about 10 minutes later. Woohoo!
We hung out with our Israeli amigos for the rest of the evening and generally tried to stay out of the very gusty, dusty wind and cold.
Day 3: Confluenzia to Mendoza
On our final day of hiking, it was pretty much all downhill. Which was great, because we were stuffed. Shouldering our hefty backpacks once again we set off down the mountain back to Puente del Inca. After a much shorter and easier walk we made it back and had about 4 hours to kill in Puente del Inca before our bus arrived. The 'sandwicheria' there makes a great steak sandwich, by the way. Finally our bus arrived and we set off back to Mendoza. After changing buses in a town called Uspallata we began what was one of the scariest bus rides I've been on. It seems that the bus company has two policies about speed.
1) When driving on flat or slightly up-hill roads, drive at a maximum of 40 km/h.
2) When on a down-hill road, avoid using breaks unless absolutely necessary.
When the hill you're driving down is the Andes, this can make life very interesting. Even more interesting is when you can see the driver yawning all the way down the mountain...
Needless to say, we made it back to Mendoza in one piece, and after a long-awaited shower and some dinner we crashed out and had a great night's sleep.
We will still be in Mendoza until Friday, while we wait for our Brazilian visas to get processed. Next, we will most likely be heading to Chile. We'll keep you posted.
Until then, hasta luego!
Los Davides
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