Forty hours after

leaving Dublin, we’ve arrived in Mendoza. We have in night in a hotel here. Then tomorrow we pick up our park permits and any rental equipment here in town before heading to Penitentes for a last in a bed. The trekking starts on Tuesday.

I managed to sleep most of the way from Atlanta to Santiago. I woke up to a breakfast tofu sandwich, which was surprisingly (even to me) a lot less awful than expected. It kicked off a day of unexpected and unlooked for culinary delights.

We arrived into Santiago at 10am and were reunited with all of our bags, including the ones we’d checked in in New York. Chile have very strict controls on the import of fresh food and unfortunately two of our lads got stung. One fella had no space in his luggage for the extensive collection of mixed nuts, dried fruits and artisan cheeses which are essential on an expedition of this type. The other fella offered up space in his bag not knowing what he would be transporting. It’s not entirely clear who copied the declaration from whom but the net result was an hour delay in customs, a stern talking to from some angry Chilean officials, some very impressive paperwork and the confiscation of nuts, fruit and cheese. An inauspicious start for the lads involved – they’re sharing a tent but I’m not sure they’re talking to each other. “Don’t mention the nuts” has a good chance of becoming the group motto.

We had a 6 hour bus journey over the Andes into Argentina. One bus carried the team. Another bus carried the luggage. A few times the buses proved to be going too slow up hills, vut the enterprising lads fixed the issue no problem by opening the bonnet, staring at the engine for a few minutes and then switching drivers. It worked well as whoever had been driving the slow bus pre-stop drove extra fast afterwards to make up for it. Towards the end we were clearly getting close to the drivers’ dinner time as we overtook multiple vehicles at a time while taking a corner at the edge of a cliff.  Thrilling stuff. At one point we were so close to the bus in front of use, we could nearly  read the labels on the luggage on the back seat.

At lunch high in the Andes, the rest of the team read my blog and complained about my taking notes. From here on in, the expedition leader’s wife will no longer be referred to as the expedition leader’s wife, but will be referred to as the vet.

The border crossing was an amazing display of nonsensical bureaucracy. We managed to skip 4 lanes of tourists in cars by virtue of being tourists in a bus. Four of us were randomly selected and told to leave the bus to stand at one window, while the remaining seven left the bus two minutes later and stood at an identical window four metres away. We queued to get one form stamped by a woman in a booth, then queued again in a separate queue to get a different form stamped by a man in the same booth. They shared an ink pad. The man then stamped the second stamp to show it had been stamped.

Finally our bags had to be checked. We all stood at examination tables with our hand luggage in front of us, waiting for the inspection. After 10 minutes one of the officials climbed onto the bus. It turns out he needed a lift into Mendoza so the requirement for any sort of search was forgotten and we went on our way.

In Mendoza we had showers, met our local guide, Packie, and went out to dinner. Most of the team took the opportunity to taste whether the  Argentinian steak was better than the Chilean steak they’d had at lunch. It was better. Packie, who’s climbed Aconcagua 27 times, told us about the weather, the benefits of the route we’d chosen,and the dangers of working with mules. Mules are a cross between a horse and a donkey – due to their mismatched parents, they’re missing a chromosomes – so they can mate all they like but can’t reproduce. We meet them on Tuesday.

Nearly at the point where we actually start walking, but not quite yet…

Cheers,
Derm