Los Andes - Chile side

Crossing the Andes is incredibly awesome, I found it very moving.  We began the day at sea level in Valparaiso, then headed east for Mendoza.  After picking up our delayed permit to take the rental Peugeot to Argentina in Santiago, it was north to the town of Los Andes for diesel and snacks.

Road trips need snacks.  We went for a variety of things that weren't available at home.  Pap, Kem and Bilz are popular local sodas, with some Canada Dry limon too, and Pepsi.  Motumbo is a chocolate marshmallow bar covered in chocolate.  The chips on the left are steak flavour.  

The Andes are massive.  They're rugged.  It doesn't feel anything like driving through Rogers Pass or something; it feels desolate, like people can just barely make it through, and aren't firmly established there.

I didn't know if these signs would compare with caution signs in the alps or north america.

Semis are visible on the first set of switchbacks.

Lots of vertical is gained in a short distance.  There are no guardrails.

These switchbacks are steep.  I think there were close to 30 by the top, here's the first set.  It's all very raw feeling.

 View from a higher set of switchbacks after a short "plateau".

How steep are they?  Well, they're steep enough to justify covering some of the avalanche chute things with gravel and putting a ski lift up over them.  This grade doesn't look too flat to me.

This is either a worker camp for construction or part of the ski lodges.  There's a ski area that sprawls all over the place here.  That's also a seriously large mountain behind.

The border crossing comes in 4 stages, two on each side.  The actual "line" of the border is under the continental divide, which is now traversed by tunnel.  At the first and last sections they give/check a piece of paper stating how many people you have with you.  As far as I can deduce, it's to reduce drop offs/pickups with hiking across the mountains, as they're spaced far enough apart that you couldn't feasibly do it.

Thanks for having us, Chile!

There's massive infrastructure efforts happening on the Chilean side.

Here's the entrance to Tunel Cristo Redento.  There's  a new, larger one say 50m to the right that looks like it's being completed.  I should have taken a photo of the original up and over road too, darn!