Puente del Inca, Mendoza, Argentina
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Took a day tour up into an area of the mountains to the west of Mendoza called "Alto Montana" (or High Mountains) as far as the border with Chile and passing Aconcagua (6962m), the highest mountain in the Americas. The mountain valley was very arid and quite beautiful. We stopped at a place called Puente del Inka, where minerals in a hot spring have formed a natural bridge and also covered the remains of a hotel that was built there and destroyed in a flood. We climbed up a winding mountain gravel road (which has been replaced by a tunnel as its the main Santiago-Mendoza-Buenos Aires road) to the highest point on the pass where the border post is and where a statue of Christ has been built at 3200m and where a gale was blowing. Aconcagua didn't actually look particularly tall as its surrounded by other peaks nearly as high.
