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Travelogue: Driving from Santiago, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina

My parents came to visit last week and we decided to rent a car and drive over the Andes to visit Mendoza for Vendimia, the grape harvest festival. I’ve already been to Mendoza , but I’d never driven over the Andes, which is always rated one of the best drives in South America.

For someone used to flying into countries or driving between the US and Canada, there are a surprising amount of hoops you have to jump through before you’re even able to go from Chile to Argentina, especially if you’re renting a car. First, you must have a notarized letter of permission from the car owner that says you’re legally able to take the car out of Chile. Next you have to have a special type of insurance for the entire time you’re in Argentina or else Chile won’t let you out and Argentina won’t let you in. You also have to carry proof of insurance with you at all times, especially at the border. If your insurance is expired when you try to come back to Chile, Argentina reserve the right to keep the car until you personally come back with valid insurance. Lastly, you have to have the customs form that lists when the car has gone out/in of Chile in the past.

Paperwork to go from Chile/Argentina. At the end, lots of stamps!
Paperwork to go from Chile/Argentina. At the end, lots of stamps!

If you don’t have ALL of them, you won’t be able to leave and will have to turn around at the border. Make sure you call to reserve your rental car a few days ahead of time, as the agencies need time to get the paperwork in order. Most companies ask for a week in advance, but I was able to do it with two days notice. My insurance and all of the paperwork cost CLP$70.000 (US$140) for five days in Argentina and I probably could have gotten it a little cheaper if I had shopped around.

Once I took care of all of that, we got on the road. We left Santiago and headed northwest into the foothills toward the city of Los Andes. The first hour or so is on nice four lane highway, but as you make your way toward Portillo, the sky center, it turns into a winding two lain highway with some significant dropoffs. It can be frustrating because trucks have to travel incredibly slowly and there aren’t many passing zones.

There’s currently construction on the Chilean side of the border to make the road safer and the countries have agreed alternate traffic. You can go into Argentina from 20:00 to 07:00 and back into Chile from 08:00 to 19:00. This construction is likely to go on for at least another two months.

We arrived at the construction zone at about 18:30 and had to wait until about 20:30 to get moving. There were probably 60 cars ahead of us, plus another 100 behind us by the time we got moving. It ended up being a mess because everyone arrived at the border crossing at the same time. When there’s no construction, you can arrive at any time cross. Total driving time should be around 5 hours. In our case, it took us 7 hours of driving time because we had to wait in a huge line at the border.

Andes looking volcanic

Because of the construction we had to cross at night, so we didn’t get a feeling of just how big the mountains were on the way into Argentina. But I felt myself steadily driving up on nice wide two lane highways. All of the sudden we reached a sign that said “zona de curvas peligrosas” dangerous curves, and we started to go up, straight up. It was mesmerizing watching the cars zigzagging up the hairpin turns, seeing the white and red lights like tiny ants on the mountain above us. There were 28 curves in all and it took us almost 45 minutes to cover the 7km to the top.

The border crossing is located at the top, just before the Cristo Redentador tunnel that connects Chile and Argentina. The countries have partnered together to have a shared border control all in one place. There’s four steps: first, show your auto papers, insurance, permission to leave Chile, etc, that we talked about before. If you don’t have it, Chile won’t let you out of the country and will send you back down the mountain. Second, you have to have the correct papers to leave Chile, your passport or identity card. After those papers are stamped, you move onto Argentinian border control. The Argentinians stamp your passports and check to make sure you have your insurance paid up and that the Chileans have let you take your car out of the country. Another stamp.

Day 7 Daytime crawl down Andes switchbacks with trucks (25)

If you’re from the US, Canada or Australia, you must pay the reciprocity fee ahead of time and bring the printout. The rules just changed in February and they don’t have anyone at the border to take your money. They were nice enough to let us use their personal computer to pay the fee and print out the paper, or they would have sent us back down the mountain and into Chile. Previously, Argentina only collected this fee if you flew into Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires.

Next, you pass to Argentinian customs where they make sure you’re not bringing in contraband or huge amounts of dollars. Since we were clearly tourists, they just asked two questions and let us go. All told, we were at the border for about two and a half hours.  On the return trip, it only took us 30 minutes.

The road down from the border slowly slopes down, following the path of a large river. After about an hour, you arrive at Upsallata, a small resort town in a beautiful valley. From there’s it’s another hour and a half, at least to Mendoza. Make sure to watch out for trucks. We saw three different trucks completely flipped over and could smell burning breaks on countless others. They drive about 20km per hour going down the mountain, making for interesting passing in no passing zone opportunities.

Day 7 Dammed up river

After three days in Mendoza, we drove back to Chile during daylight. The mountains are huge and colors change quickly as you drive farther in. We stopped at Upsallata for a bbq lunch at a truck stop, which was one of the better lunches I’ve had. The owners were preparing their own Sunday family lunch and served us some of what they were going to eat: five cuts of beef, two types of sausage, potatoes, a tomato, onion and lettuce salad and homemade bread. It was just what I needed to make the drive up over the mountains and back into Chile.

The drive itself lived up to its billing. It’s a beautiful, fun drive, but make sure you have all of your paperwork in order or you might get turned around at the border. I wouldn’t want to try it in winter though!

Day 7 Daytime crawl down Andes switchbacks with trucks (16)

 

Looking for more high quality information about Chile? Check out my book Chile: The Expat’s Guide:

chile expat guide cover

Travelogue: Mendoza, Argentina

Santiago and Mendoza, Argentina are separated by about 120 miles and one huge mountain range.  Instead of a 2 hour drive, it’s a 5-6 hour drive through the Andes mountains.  You can go by plane in about 40 minutes.  Mendoza had been on our list of places to visit and when Mendoza showed up LAN Airlines’ Last Minute specials for about $70, we decided to book a weekend.  If you’re traveling in South America, make sure to look at the prices in Spanish, they were 50% cheaper than the ones in English.  For more Mendoza tips and tricks, check out my friend Paige’s post on Tripeezy.

Mendoza is a laid back city of Malbec, beef & pasta, olive oil, ice cream and beautiful, wide streets, set at the foot of the Andes mountains.  A little over 100k people live in Mendoza proper, but the city sprawls out to include about 850k people in the suburbs and surrounding area.  Central Mendoza sort of reminded me of an Argentine Madison in terms of size and pace of life.  The city is set out in a grid system emanating from the beautiful, green Plaza de Independencia in the middle.  Main streets are wide boulevards with ample pedestrian walkways shaded by large trees.  The streets are lined with cafes, restaurants and gelato parlours.

Mendoza is much cheaper than Santiago and clearly less developed.  The houses and buildings look a bit older, but it’s still a very well developed city.  Argentina has a large Italian influence, so that means pasta and gelato, along with a more sing-songy Spanish.  They also pronounce words that have the “LL” as more of a “sh”, although less so than in Buenos Aires.  They often say “vos” instead of “tú” and speak slower and more clearly than most Chileans.  There also seems to be a higher penetration of English, but that could be because we were in a touristy part of the city and Mendoza is a touristy city.

Nightlife starts even later in Mendoza.  We ate dinner at about 10pm and we were pretty much the only people in the restaurant.  It filled up by about 1045.  We went out to for some drinks about 12/1 and the clubs weren’t even open yet.  They start to open at 2am and then close around 6/7am.  Mendozans take a siesta, which means just about everything is close for an hour or two in the afternoon.   Everything and I mean everything was closed on Sunday.

On Friday, we took the short flight over the Andes and checked into our hostel.  It was about $15 per person per night and located close to the city center.  We walked around for a few hours, ate some great gelato and then met some friends for lunch on one of Mendoza’s many wide boulevards.  We walked to a nice park and then went back to the hostel for a bit of a rest.  After awhile, we checked out The Vines of Mendoza, which was started by two guys fro Austin, TX.  They had a great selection local wines and you could get a great class for about $2-3.  They also had a great cheese and meat plate with some great blue cheese.

Next, we went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant named La Marchigiania that the taxi driver recommended.  We shared an amazing caprese salad that included the best balsamic vinegar I’ve ever had.  Next, we split two different types of steak and a spinach and pasta dish that were both top notch.  Dessert was a chocolate fudge ball, covered in ice cream, then covered in hard chocolate.  By about 1230, we had our fill and asked for the bill.  For two appetizers, four main courses, three nice bottles of wine and a dessert, our bill came out to about $75 total, or about $19 each, including tip.  Needless to say, we were impressed by the quality and price of Argentine food.

Bodega Cavas de Don Arturo

The next day, we got up early and went on a wine tour.  The four of us booked a driver and three wineries and spent the day in the beautiful wine country at the foot of the Andes.  Our first winery was Cavas de Don Arturo, a small family owned winery that only produces a small amount of wine by hand each year.  We tried a few different wines and took at tour of the beautiful winery.  Next we went to Septima, which is part of a large Spanish company.  It was quite the contrast between a small, handmade winery and a large, commercial operation.

Ruca Mallen

We ended our tour at Ruca Mallen, where we booked lunch.  For $50, we had a six course tasting menu, with six wine pairings.  The Ruca Mallen outdoor dining area is an amazing place to eat and the meal matched the setting.  The highlights were the quinoa lemon & olive oil salad, pumpkin milanesa and the fig crusted steak.  All of the food was great.  The best wine of the day was a 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec blend that was paired with the steak.  This $50 meal would have cost $175-200 in the US and the wine alone was probably $75-100 in the US, maybe more.  The value for money was top notch.

Steak, photo credit Paige Brown, Tripeezy

That night, we slept off our meal and then checked out some of the nightlife.  It was nice and relaxing and after the huge meal and wine, we ended up calling it a night fairly early by Mendoza standards.  The next day, we woke up and took a minibus about 45 minutes outside of the city into a canyon with a river flowing through it.  There was a public pool which reminded me of a smaller Wisconsin Dells and an upscale spa that was really expensive, so we just joined the other locals and walked down into the canyon and hung out by the river.  We had lunch at a small asado restaurant and ate costillar (beef ribs) that had been grilled with real wood about thirty yards away.  We spent the rest of the day lounging around and then took the minbus back to the hostel.

We decided to have one more top notch meal and ended up at 1884 for another top notch meal.  I had another steak and we all shared appetizers and wine.  The highlight was a goat cheese and apple salad with an interesting balsamic.  The outdoor setting was beautiful, the food was great and the conversation was even better.  While good, I thought the other two meals we had were better values.  Although we can’t spend any Startup Chile money on our travels, the weekend was an expense I was willing to pay.  We all needed a relaxing break away from Santiago and our businesses.

Shahar, Jesse and Paige napping after a big meal

Manuel Beaudroit, Belo: How cryptocurrency is helping Latin Americans, Ep 185

You can now find the full show notes of the Crossing Borders podcast on LatamList.com’s new podcast section. I’ll still post the audio of the podcast on my blog and I’m planning to start writing more again on my blog, like I used to.

Subscribe to the LatamList Weekly newsletter to get updated on the week’s top tech news and stories from the region.

Thanks for listening to Crossing Borders all these years! If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out here, or contact me on social media.

Outline of this episode:

  • [01:20] – About Belo
  • [01:59] – What does inflation look like in Latin America versus the U.S.?
  • [04:30] – Manuel’s background
  • [06:00] – Previous ventures before Belo
  • [10:27] – Why is bitcoin popular in Argentina?
  • [13:25] – Why Manuel started Belo instead of anything else
  • [16:30] – How clients use Belo
  • [19:43] – How will Belo’s use cases and products evolve?
  • [23:11] – Misunderstandings of crypto and Web3
  • [25:56] – Book recommendations
  • [26:45] – Advice to younger self
  • [28:20] – What’s next for Belo

Shownotes on Latamlist.com

How to Ask (Me) for Help

Note: If I sent you this post in response to you reaching out, don’t feel bad. Read the post and use the template and I’ll be very likely to respond. I didn’t learn this method until someone taught me. I wrote an original post in 2012, this is the update.

I get ~100 inbound requests for help or advice each week. As Magma Partners grows, the volume keeps going up. Most of them are cold. The template I lay out below is how to get me to respond.

I have used this template to get advice from extremely, busy, successful people who I never thought would respond. I can’t remember a single person who has reached out using this method who I didn’t respond to. 

While I can’t guarantee that I’ll respond, if you want to improve the odds 10x that I’ll respond, use this template. I highly suggest trying it with other people too.

If you’re a founder, the absolute best way to get my attention cold is via a Magma Memo. Our investment team responds to 100% of these cold inbounds, and many of our best investments came in cold, including Albo, Yana, and many more. If you want to send an email or DM to say you’ve filled out the form, feel free, but the Magma Memo guarantees a response.

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