Los Andes - Argentine side

The Argentine side strikes one as immediately more sparse with less capital investment.  Feels desolate.  Of course I wondered from both sides if this would be bike-able.  Technically, everything is bikable.  This could be done.  The wind and distances would get you though, there's really no places to get a little shade, or have a little stop, or a little refuel.  You'd have to plan for a long, long day self sufficient.  Maybe you could get a car to drop some water at the top.  And if you have the vertical conquered, the wind might get you too.  

The valley is long and at a gentle grade.  We just coast down it. 

Shortly after crossing the border we come to the Aconcogua park.

The interpretive hut is made of stone yet still has howling, vicious sounding cold wind pulling at the structure all the time.  Here's a map of the various routes to the top.

Cerro Aconcogua is in the back.  You can drive a ways to a lake and hike a ways past that too before actual registration and real gear are needed.

Beauty!

Back towards the border.

There's a derelict railroad track along the road.  There's a few small ski areas - one had a magic carpet and two t bars, another seemed to have two or three t bars.  I'd suspect that lifts in the air might not be compatible with the amount of wind this valley gets.

The power line poles are 75% vertical, 20% crooked, and 5% fallen over.

I'm happy because a) I'm booking it in a speedy Peugeot Partner that can get up to triple digit speeds with a downhill grade, and b) the hour plus going through 4 separate paper pushers plus 2 guys who searched the car proved that enough paperwork was in hand to be allowed to cross into Argentina.  This was completed with a level of spanish comprehension of about 10% of all that was said.

Once we show this very important piece of paper a third time (receive on Chile side, show once on Chile side and twice on Argentina side), we're done home free.  I've mentioned before that Chileans and Argentinians look different.  Argentines have a euro spanish/italian look.  The border guard lady who we  handed this too looked like an extra from the girl from the movie Stripes.

Perhaps a more conservative highway commission would deem a guard rail appropriate here.

The bridge maintenance is a bit less on the Argentine side.

This picture doesn't show it well, but the remainder of the valley has a super sharp erosional edge that the river cut out.  It's probably a hundred feet tall, cut sharp and right angled as can be imagined, for 20-30km.

The mountains go red eventually.