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My first experience in climbing a volcano

My friend and me were 20 years old when we decided to take our rucksacks and to depart to Chile. We took the train to Mendoza City with our visitor health insurance, where we had already gone for our graduation trip  . When we arrived in the city, it was just as we remembered it: it was clean, tidy, beautiful. After leaving our rucksacks in a simple hotel, we went for a walk along Mendoza’s downtown. We went to the San Martín Park and to the yacht Club. The next day we went up to the government buildings and we wandered along the main streets. Then, we took a remise and we went to Las Cuevas, the frontier pass. They forbade us to go along with snacks, and we decided to go to Santiago, the capital city of the neighboring country, Chile. On the other side of the mountain Range the road is asphalted and it goes in zigzag, so that, from the summit all the hillside roads can be perfectly seen. When we arrived in Santiago de Chile, we were surprised because of the city stillness. Suddenly, it became crowed and the people were going from one place to the other. At night, we went for a walk and we met some Argentinean boys, who were tourists too.

The “Gringo”

Little by little, the tourist circuits of the Puna are being well known. What was really an adventure some years ago, today is a trip with less risk than before and practically accessible to everybody. Nevertheless, the region is wild and great.

It was summer. The rainy season on the north area. The most important item you need while you are traveling to America is visitor insurance USA. The route Nº 40 goes from San Antonio de los Cobres to the north, crossing the Puna, looking for Abra Pampa, and it goes on skirting Salinas Grandes de Jujuy and going along countless temporary rainwater’s beds that come down from the hills to Salinas.  Of course, it sometimes becomes a ditch, sometimes a lagoon.

I was crossing the region in a 4 wheel-drive, sometimes, I had to go out of the road because it became a true lake. Suddenly, I met a car that was stopped in the middle of nothing. I looked for the passengers but I found nobody. So, I decided to go on and to tell the gendarmerie checking post. But almost immediately I saw a shape in the skyline that was walking with a rucksack to his shoulder. He was the driver of the abandoned car, a Belgian man, who had decided to give it up after it broke down, because of the flooded road and the mud. He went on walking towards, he thought he could find help, after staying almost the whole day waiting for somebody to pass along there.

I made him a place among my passengers and we comforted him with water and some food, and I took him to Purmamarca where he decided to stay.

He thought that he had taken the correct decision when he abandoned the car, because he didn’t know the region’s climatic characteristics. In the Puna, due to its height, it is possible to find out 4 seasons along a day. If the night had surprised him outdoors, probably he would have died due to the cold weather; and the distance, that there was up to the R52 couldn’t have been done during daylight time. “The “gringo” was lucky”; the town’s people said.