Aconcagua

    Friday I went to Parque Nacional Aconcagua to see the tallest mountain in the western and southern hemispheres, Aconcagua, at 22,837 ft.  It's on the same route to Chile, and took 4 hours to get there by bus, so Megan, Amanda and I left at 6 am from the bus terminal to get there. The bus dropped us off in Puente del Inca, a tiny little town 4 kilometers from the national park. This tourist town was built next to the Puente del Inca, a natural bridge formation over the Mendoza River. Here the water is hot and there are nearby hot springs, which petrified the surface of the ground to form the bridge. A hot spring spa was built into the bridge, and this bridge was even written about by Charles Darwin.

Us in front of the mountain we thought was Aconcagua

    From Puente del Inca, we walked to the park, the whole time thinking that the mountain in front of me was Aconcagua, even though it wasn't very big, I figured we must be at a really high altitude so the mountain didn't seem that big. I felt really stupid when I realized that it absolutely was not Aconcagua, which was farther back in the range of mountains, and much much bigger.

There is the real Aconcagua behind me.

    It was really windy and cold when we arrived, and barely warmed up during the day, but the mountains blocked some of the wind once we entered the park. It was a dollar fifty to enter the park, and there were two small self guided loops to walk in the park to see the views of the mountain. We also walked a little farther on one of the trails leading to the base camp of Aconcagua. It's a 17 day trek to reach the top, done with a guide and lost of acclimating. The colors of the mountains were so beautiful, and there are huge "wandering rocks" in the valley that were brought down the mountain with glacier movement. There are multiple lagoons in the park too from snow melt. Aconcagua was covered in snow from the recent snow in the mountains after zonda wind last weekend. The top was covered in clouds so we couldn't quite see the whole mountain. Even though it was off season for visiting the park, there were quite a few tour groups there from both Chile and Argentina. The tourist information center had hot coffee out for us which was nice, and gave us a place to warm up. We spent about 5 hours wandering the town and the park, then came back to the town to get hot chocolate and alfajores until our bus arrived to take us back.