The highest mountain outside of Asia

For the 1st time in a month we got on a plane yesterday and flew from Bariloche to Mendoza, capital of the biggest and best wine region in South America, but that is not all that is the biggest and the best.

Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas at 6961m (22841 ft). So of course we went to climb (a bit of) it. The base is a 3 hour drive through stunning valleys. Its a reasonably good road, since its the main transit road between Argentina and Chile. However, that also means that there are a lot of trucks, and they "caused" us an hours delay. You see I was just overtaking two of them, when the police stopped me. "Do you speak Spanish?". We reply a little bit. So he says something about double lines and we pretend not to really understand. He asks for the usual documents and then disappears for 50 minutes. Now you don't need to be a cynic to think this is an attempt to have us go in the office and offer to "pay" in cash. Whatever the case we don't give in. In the end I get a ticket, for crossing a double line. What will it cost? No idea...we will find out later.

So on we went to a 2 hour walk up to the viewpoint of Aconcaqua. The walk a little shorter than it might have been, given that Flo is still on crutches. But I don't think we missed much by not going further, as the initial 2.5 hours is pretty flat, so the view doesn't change much. The weather was perfect and so was the view. In real life the peak feels much closer than in the photos. The giant glacier is more impressive too.

After we came down, we went to a strange, natural, solid rock bridge over the river, called Inca Bridge. It has nothing at all to do with the Incas, instead it was made by sediment on top of glacial ice that later melted.

Sightseeing done we headed back towards Mendoza and had dinner (oh no steaks again :) ), in a pretty little town called Potrerillos that sits next to a stunning late.

That traffic ticket cost? A cool $300, or not so cool really. This felt like a total rip off, orchestrated by the police. Strangely the local government gives you a Whatsapp chat number you can contact, so I did. the guy told me I can appeal via what's app, but I have to pay $2 for the cost of the appeal. So that sounded like good odds. lets see what happensЧитать далее