Chile - BRIDGET THE MIDGET

We left Santiago at around 8:00am and followed the route recommended by the hotel which turned out to be OK but not quite perfect. After a short detour I navigated us in the right direction, more or less! For the first one hundred miles there are hills and mountains in every direction I look. It is really beautiful and just as I am becoming accustomed to it we turn a bend and there ahead of us is the Pacific Ocean. The first thing to strike me about it are the rollers coming into the shore, they are between 15 and 20 feet high although the ocean doesn’t appear to be generally rough. Further on and there are white caps everywhere across the ocean. Off to the east I can see the snow capped mountains of the Andes and to the west the Pacific Ocean. I know from studying the map that they are converging and pushing in on the highway. When they actually...

After a quick check of all Bridget’s fluids and filling her with fuel we left Mendoza a little after 8:30am. The plan for the day was to travel the 250 miles leaving behind Argentina and entering Chile. In between are the Andes Mountains. I was still felling fairly high after the previous days paragliding experience so I thought that there might be a risk that whatever today brought would be overshadowed. I need not have worried. I got my first glimpse of the Andes as I drove south from Mendoza on Route 7. We turned west towards Uspallata and the mountain range stretched out before us. In nature my two great loves are mountains and deserts, so the sight of what was to come really thrilled me. Having already on this journey experienced the foothills of the Himalayas and on previous journeys visited the Alps, the Andes and Rockies are the only two major ranges that I learnt about at school that...

Santiago to Peru

Mendoza to Santiago