Portillo and Los Libertadores

The old road to Argentina: thirty numbered hairpins stacked up the Caracoles to three thousand metres.

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Why this ride

96 km from Los Andes to the finish, about 1 h 51 of riding. On the way it passes Río Blanco and Portillo. The climb of the day is Caracoles. It tops out at 3,200 m. Cristo Redentor Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It crosses from Chile into Argentina - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.

Roadbook

1. Los Andes start · 820 m

   Los Andes is the last Chilean town before the mountains, a lively market town of nearly sixty thousand people at 820 metres in the green valley of the Aconcagua River, and from here the road climbs steeply towards the Paso de los Libertadores and Argentina. The town is surrounded by orchards and vineyards, with peaches, grapes and avocados growing in the warm, sunny valley, and the snowy peaks of the Andes rise sharply to the east.

   The town has a few stories. The poet Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, taught at a girls' school here in the 1910s, and she wrote some of her early poems in Los Andes. Nearby, at Auco, the sanctuary of Santa Teresa de Los Andes honours a young Carmelite nun who died in 1920 and became Chile's first saint, and it draws thousands of pilgrims. The old Transandine Railway, which once climbed over the mountains to Mendoza, started here; it closed in the 1980s, and its rusting tracks and tunnels can still be seen along the road.

   The ride to the pass is one of the great roads of South America. Route 60 climbs through the narrowing valley, past old railway bridges and small settlements, and then attacks the mountainside in a series of twenty-nine hairpins, known as Los Caracoles, which zigzag up a steep slope to the ski resort of Portillo and the turquoise Laguna del Inca. The border crossing is at the Cristo Redentor tunnel, at about 3,200 metres, with the customs complex on the Chilean side. Across the border, on the Argentine side, you pass close to Aconcagua, at 6,961 metres the highest mountain outside Asia.

   The pass is often closed in winter because of snow, sometimes for days, and even in summer the weather can change quickly, with strong winds and cold temperatures at the top. Trucks are heavy on this route, as it is the main road between Santiago and Mendoza, and they crawl up the hairpins. Border formalities can take time, so bring all your documents and patience.

   Los Andes has fuel, food and every service, and it is a good place to fill up and stock up before the climb. Eat a hearty lunch of pastel de choclo or empanadas, and buy some fruit from the market for the road.

2. Río Blanco scenic · 1420 m

   Río Blanco is a narrow spot in the Aconcagua valley where the mountains close in and the road to Argentina begins to climb in earnest. It sits at fourteen hundred metres, thirty kilometres above Los Andes, and its significance is geographical as well as practical. Here two rivers, the Juncal and the Blanco, meet to form the Aconcagua, which runs west through the valley to the Pacific near Concón. The place has been a gateway for centuries, used by Indigenous traders, then by Spanish colonists, and later by the armies that crossed the mountains during the independence wars.

   The modern road, Route 60, follows the same route, and it is the main link between Santiago and Mendoza, so it carries a heavy flow of lorries. It is also a good riding road, with smooth tarmac, strong gradients and a constant sense of the mountains closing in. The valley walls are rust-red and ochre, scattered with cacti and dry scrub, and the river runs fast and cloudy at the bottom. The mining operations of Andina, a large copper mine in the high mountains, are a presence in the valley, and you will see the mine's buses and trucks moving up and down.

   The Transandine Railway also ran through here. Opened in the early twentieth century, it climbed from the Chilean side to a long tunnel under the pass and on to Mendoza, an astonishing piece of engineering that carried passengers and freight until the 1980s. Sections of the old track and a few bridges can still be seen alongside the road. It is a good place to imagine how remote and difficult this crossing was before engines.

   Fuel and food are best done in Los Andes, a town of nearly sixty thousand people with every kind of station, shop and restaurant, thirty kilometres down the valley. There is little above Río Blanco, so fill up before you climb, and take a warm layer because the temperature drops quickly. The road is open most of the year, but heavy snow in winter closes it for periods, and the border can be shut when conditions are bad, so check before you ride. The best weather is in spring and autumn, when the air is clear and the traffic is lighter.

3. Portillo scenic · 2880 m

   Portillo is a ski resort that has become a legend among skiers for the strange reason that it is so small. A single yellow hotel stands on the shore of the Laguna del Inca, a lake of astonishing turquoise, at nearly twenty-nine hundred metres, with the peaks of the Andes closing around it on every side. The valley is narrow, steep and exposed, and the setting is extraordinary in any season. In 1966 the resort hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, the first held in the southern hemisphere, which put it on the map.

   The road that brings you here, Route 60, is the main road between Chile and Argentina, and for a rider the approach is the main event. The last section, above Los Andes and Río Blanco, climbs steadily through the dry upper valley, and the bends tighten as it rises. The air is thin, the light is hard and clear, and the asphalt is in decent shape, though in places it is scarred by trucks and by winter. In summer the Laguna del Inca is a startling blue against the grey and ochre rock, and in winter it freezes and the whole valley is white.

   This is serious mountain terrain, and the weather deserves respect. Snow can fall at any time of year at this altitude, avalanches are a real hazard in winter and spring, and the road is often closed for periods between June and September when storms hit the high Andes. Ice can persist on shaded corners long after the snow has melted. The wind is a constant and can be strong enough to unsettle a bike. Even on a clear day, the temperature can be close to freezing, so dress for a much colder place than the one you left.

   The hotel is a place for winter guests, but in summer a few services are open, and the cafe at the lake is a reasonable place to warm up. Altitude may affect you, particularly if you have come up quickly from sea level, so take it easy and drink water. Late summer and early autumn, with the snow gone from the road and the sky clear, are the best months for the ride.

4. Caracoles pass · 3200 m

   Few roads in South America have a signature as clear as this one. Los Caracoles, the snails, are the string of tight hairpins that carry the Chilean side of the Paso Los Libertadores up the last wall of the Andes, switchback upon switchback stacked up the mountain like a dropped ribbon. Locals count them in the high twenties, and every rider you meet will have a different number. At about thirty-two hundred metres, this is where the road gives up its fight with the slope and heads for the tunnel that now carries almost all the traffic into Argentina.

   Riding them is a mixture of delight and discipline. The hairpins are tight enough to need first gear, the surface is paved but patched, and on the inside of each turn the camber and the grit are worse than they look. Lorries labour up in low gear and cannot take the bends neatly, so give them space and never overtake on a hairpin. The altitude takes a little power from the engine and a good deal from the rider, so you will feel the thin air in your head before you notice it in the throttle. The reward at each corner is a wider view of the valley below, the road you just climbed visible beneath you, and the peaks standing in the clear air.

   The pass has a long human history. This is the route San Martín took in 1817 with the Army of the Andes, hauling cannon across the mountains to surprise the Spanish in Chile, one of the great feats of military logistics of the independence era. Before him, mule trains and couriers used it, and in the early twentieth century the railway tunnelled underneath. At the top of the old pass, now reached by a separate road, stands the Cristo Redentor of the Andes, a statue raised in 1904 to mark a peace treaty between Chile and Argentina.

   Los Andes is the place to fill up. Dress warmly, even in midsummer, and carry water. Late summer and autumn, after the thaw, give the clearest weather.

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