Sunday, 13 January 2008

Across the Andes

Leaving Bariloche, our bus took us around the north shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi and westwards towards the Samore pass over a comparatively low section of the Andean cordillera into Chile. We could see that we were getting closer and closer to snowier and snowier mountains, and by the time we arrived at the Argentine border post (some 40km from the Chilean one, on the other side of the pass) it was snowing, and very close to freezing. Stupidly, the one warm piece of clothing I had (a hat bought in Esquel) was buried in the bottom of my rucksack, inaccessible in the hold of the bus. So we shivered inside our hoodies while our fellow 40 passengers cleared passport controls and customs.

Next: the pass. It probably took an hour to traverse the pass, which was not bad considering there was about 4 inches of snow on the road at the top!!! This was an incredible surprise to us - the pass is not particularly high above sea level (about 1300m) and it is supposed to be summer here after all. We got some fantastic photos, as did everyone else on the bus, who all looked as surprised as us (locals included). I guess even for this part of the world snow this low in summer is fairly unusual.




At the Chilean border post all the bags had to be unloaded and scanned at customs. The snow had gone but it was still very cold. About 2 hours later we arrived in Osorno, where we bought another bus ticket and pressed on to Temuco, another few hours north.

Robin

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