Skiing the Andes Mountains

The past few days have been spent skiing 2 countries and 2 mountains. We set out from Mendoza early morning on the 17th for Los Penitentes, Argentina (on the international road to Chile). We left on a local bus which made too many stops before arriving at 10:30am. We were traveling with a British couple that we met in Mendoza and we all made our way to the ski-in hostel before hitting the slopes that day. The hostel was interesting as we had to lift our bags up a ladder to make our way to the dorm for the night. After getting settled, we quickly set out to rent our equipment and start exploring the steep mountain. The local mountain was small but extremely rough and somewhat icey terrain so we both decided to ski. Finally up on the lift, we found our ski legs again and off we were to ski the blue and red (new color for us) pistes. At the top of the mountain there are safety fences to guard the steep drop off points (do not enter) and Jacques accidently made his way down one. As he was crossing a side pass, his pole caught in the netting and swung him down the slope and his ski in another direction. The only way down was to slide and hike out, which took about 30 minutes. He was exhausted after this and we made a couple more runs before heading back for our daily cervaza at the hostel. The hostel was quite different than we had experienced, as it included a full dinner and breakfast. While we waited for our meal that evening, we caught up on the day with our friends from Mendoza, Sara and Simon before watching a movie with the rest of the crew prior to bed.











We hit the slopes early the next morning. Tuesday was a quieter day as Monday was a local public holiday and a lot of Argentineans were out. We felt like we had the mountain to ourselves and knew (or met) most people out there for the day. We ran the same runs a number of times, but they were fun and intense. The terrain is so different from what we are used to as there are no trees, poorly groomed, steep and icey but the surroundings were so natural and local to Argentina. This day was harder for me as I took a fall down a steep red and lost the confidence I had built. From that point, I had a challenging afternoon but Jacques continued to overcome his fall from the day before and dominated the mountain, as always! We had to get off the mountain early to catch a bus on the side of the road to Santiago.

In true South American style, our bus that was supposed to arrive at 5pm finally arrived at 5:30pm to pick us up on the side of the highway (which is the base of the ski resort). We greeted our bus with joy and headed off on the international highway to Santiago. About 50 km after we were picked up we hit the Chile border which was quite a long experience. First, we had to exit Argentina and then enter a seperate line to enter Chile. After clearing immigrations, all luggage and personal items were removed from the bus before a dog sniffing then x-raying. After a little over an hour of border entry (and one passenger being thoroughly interogated), we were on our way to Santiago. To our surprise, the border crossing was at the highest point between Argentina and Chile and even though it was dark for our passing, the INCREDIBLE mountain views were lit by full moon light and we could take in the ¨legendary¨ views we had heard of. The sharpness, steepness and endless ungaurded hairpin corners were breathtaking and frightening at the same time. The beer and crackers we had in our backpack were like popcorn and coke in a movie for the drive down. Finally, we reached the Santiago bus terminal and made our way via Metro to our next hostel in the Provedencia district for our next 2 nights and made our arrangements for skiing Chile the following day.

Today, our ride to Valle Nevado (highest resort in Chile) picked us up first thing in the morning to head out for our third and final day of skiing the Andes. The skies were cloudy and we heard snow was in the forecast. We made our way up the 3,000 meter climb in less than two hours to Valle Nevado (pit stop to pick up our ski/board gear). As soon as we hit the slopes, the heavens unleashed the snow flakes and we were surrounded in white out conditions. The pow-pow was perfect for Jacques and his snow board, but I had to overcome the conditions of deep, fresh and dry powder. The morning was rough for visibility but the afternoon was pristine conditions (minus the blue sky). We carved the mountain until the last chair sent us packing back to our van for the hairy ride down. The van was equipped with much needed snow chains, which played a major part in the windy and snow covered roads back to Santiago. Due to an oncoming van driving too fast, we ended up plowing into the snowy edge of the cliff but the seasoned driver and chains saved us and we were back on the road in no time.







After dropping our equipment in at the ski shop in Santiago and picking up a cerveza for the ride we headed back in heavy traffic to the hostel with our new passenger, Willie. He spoke about as much Spanish as we did English, but we ended up having a ¨Spanglish¨ conversation for the majority of the ride back. Willie was a hoot with his whisky toasting our cerveza constantly and wishing 10 children upon us. We had many laughs and finally hugs with Willie before departing for the night. Back at the hostel, we enjoyed our last night with home baked empanadas and a local wine for dinner. What a perfect way to end our last night in South America before heading back to the States and on with the rest of our trip!



**Just a side note - one of our major concerns for the last part of this trip was making the trip from Mendoza to Santiago as the road can close for a number of days due to snow storms. As our GOOD luck would have it (and changing our orginal plans while in Mendoza), we missed a major storm by a day and caught one of the last buses across the border before the road closed for 3 days. If this had happened, we would have not only missed the great fun day skiing Chile, but also would have not made it for our flight back to the States from Santiago, resulting in missing our New Zealand flight. Thank you guardian angels!!!