Can Soccer & the Pope Cause Border Issues?

Because of deadlines on another commitment, I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit, but it’s also because most recent off-season news from the Southern Cone has been topics that don’t much rouse my interest, most notably soccer and religion. Though to some people the two apparently overlap, to me they’re the cultural equivalent of Ambien.

First, chronologically, is the fact that Chile hosted the 2015 Copa América soccer tournament and defeated Argentina in the championship game a few days in a so-called “penalty shootout” (roughly equivalent to deciding a basketball game by shooting free throws). It still mystifies me that soccer players are incapable of continuing in overtime until somebody actually scores – at the very least, this would determine which team had the best-conditioned athletes.

Chileans were ecstatic, Argentines rather less so – especially the 7,000 who were caught on the Chilean side of the Andes when snow blocked their return to Argentina (the photograph above, taken from the Chilean side in summer, shows the snow-covered summit of Cerro Aconcagua in the distance). Some of those Argentines, apparently, responded to the border closure by staging rowdy protests and even robbing chickens and empanadas from a restaurant in the city of Los Andes.

I’ve managed to avoid soccer games since playing briefly as a schoolchild but, decades ago, I actually attended a Mass with a Chilean friend who has since become an atheist. It was a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience I’d prefer not to repeat, though I do occasionally enter churches – and once, even a mosque – in the course of researching and photographing my own guidebooks. While I can acknowledge their historical significance, that’s the limit of my interest.

Admittedly, that’s not true for everyone – as will be apparent in Paraguay this weekend. Since adopting the alias “Pope Francis,” the artist formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio has still not returned to his native Argentina, but a million Argentines may overrun border crossings this weekend as the Pope is due to make an appearance in the capital city of Asunción.

If so, they’d better do so soon. According to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, Argentine customs agents will go on strike tomorrow. Whether those who manage to cross the border will be able to return could be another question entirely, and we can only hope they won’t emulate the soccer fans who were stuck in Chile.

Contradicting Condé Nast: My Top 5 South American Cities

Recently, Condé Nast Traveler used its Readers’ Choice Awards to produce a list of the Top 5 Cities in Central & South America. In principle, I’m averse to such listicles but, nevertheless, I can’t look away completely. Thus, I’ve decided to comment on the survey and, then, produce a list of my own that will, hopefully, provided a credible corrective or supplement. I subscribe to the magazine – at about US$12 per year, that’s no big sacrifice - but the survey itself appears online.

Condé Nast’s No. 1 city is Buenos Aires (pictured above) which, of course, I cover in my own city guide and in guides to Argentina and Patagonia (additional comments below). No. 2 is Cusco which, though I haven’t visited Peru for many years now, is certainly a credible choice for its Inka and colonial heritage, and as a historic gateway to Machu Picchu. I got to know it in my backpacker days and, though it’s certainly changed now, it’s hard to dismiss it from such a list.

No. 3 is Cartagena, Colombia (pictured above and below), for which I have a special affection as the first memorable city I ever saw in South America (flying from Costa Rica, I landed in the grubby Caribbean port of Barranquilla, which I’d sooner forget, but nearby colonial Cartagena’s walled city was unforgettable). Fortunately, I was able to return a few years ago, and it was better (though notably more expensive) than I remembered it from my backpacker days. I’m bewildered, though, that the magazine would even have to suggest visiting “the old part of the city, as well as the newer areas…” since the old part is the only part worth visiting. In the newer part, you might as well be in Miami.

No. 4 is Paraty, Brazil, a surprise choice that I really know nothing about. Personally, in my limited Brazilian experiences, I would choose Bahía (Salvador). No. 5 is Antigua Guatemala, the colonial capital ironically saved by an earthquake that forced the movement of the political capital 30 miles east to present-day Guatemala City. Antigua, which I covered in an early edition of Moon Handbooks Guatemala, has a remarkable critical mass of colonial architectural treasures, even if some of them are ruins or semi-ruins, and the presence of a rich Mayan culture in and around it.

My own Top 5 differs significantly from Condé Nast’s, but then it’s not crowd-sourced like theirs, which relies on polling based on vague standards of culture, friendliness, atmosphere, restaurants, lodging and shopping. I take a different approach which, though still subjective, has parallels with the standard I use to evaluate restaurants: “Would I go eat here again?” This reflects my own experience and, over the course of three decades experience, it covers the places I most look forward to returning to. The order that follows below is random.

BUENOS AIRES

In this I concur with Condé Nast readers, even if I detest the “Paris of the South” cliché – which needs to be retired sooner rather than later. Buenos Aires is not a European metropolis, but rather a New World immigrant city that’s more analogous to New York. For my part, it helps that I own property there, so I have all the benefits of travel while still being able to sleep in my own bed.

VALPARAÍSO

From my East Bay home, San Francisco is less than 20 minutes away by the Transbay Tube, but I rarely go there except en route to SFO for a flight to Argentina or Chile. I prefer to spend time in Valparaíso, the first major Pacific port on the Round-the-Horn route to the Gold Rush and, with its steep hills, cranky funiculars, brightly painted houses and cool summer fogs, “Valpo” is South America’s San Francisco. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it also has longstanding historical links with California, as Isabel Allende (now a California resident) showed so vividly in her historical novel Daughter of Fortune.

COLONIA DEL SACRAMENTO

Barely an hour from Buenos Aires by ferry, the walled city of Colonia del Sacramento was a buffer between Portugal and Spain, and then between Brazil and Argentina, until Uruguay became an independent country. Towns of its antiquity, with its cobbled streets and low-slung houses, are unusual in southernmost South America. It’s a walker’s delight.

MENDOZA

At the base of the Argentine Andes, Mendoza is a commercially driven world wine capital whose downtown street trees form, in the words of the late Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, a “roof of leaves woven together like the fingers of a huge circle of inseparable lovers.” Its park and plazas are a delight, while its backcountry can boast the “Roof of the Americas” in Cerro Aconcagua, the Western Hemisphere’s highest summit.

PUNTA ARENAS

Stretching along the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas was Ground Zero for the “wool rush” that transformed the Patagonian steppes, in both Chile and Argentina, into massive sheep ranches that clothed Europe and made a handful of entrepreneurs rich and influential (more so in Argentina than in Chile, however). They left some memorable architecture, and the city’s also the gateway to the Fuegian fjords (pictured below).

An App for Recoleta; An Elevation for Aconcagua

Recently, by email, I got back in touch with Robert Wright, whom I first got to know as he created and guided architectural tours around Buenos Aires. While a relative novice in the city then, Robert had a good background for such work, having spent several years leading trips for Rick Steves in Spain and Portugal, and contributing to Steves’s Europe Through the Back Door guidebook series (It was purely coincidental that Steves’s series and Moon Handbooks, to which I contribute guidebooks including Buenos Aires, are under the umbrella of the same publisher, Avalon Travel Publishing).

Devoted to detail, Robert mapped these same tours and even created the first accurate map of the Cementerio de la Recoleta, one of the world’s elite boneyards - right up there with London’s Highgate and Paris’s Pere Lachaise. While he has retired from leading tours in Buenos Aires, he has continued his research on the city and founded the website Endless Mile to distribute walking tour guides, including the central Plaza de Mayo, the underrated Once neighborhood, and a survey of the city’s domes. These he sells as PDFs but, more recently, he has created an iPhone app for Recoleta that I have just had the pleasure to review.

While it’s not so comprehensive as the PDF version (which covers some 70 tombs), the app plots a walking tour of 25 of the most significant sepulchers, with special attention to Evita. It also deals, though, with lesser known but equally unusual stories such as that of Rufina Cambaceres, a 19-year-old who, legend says, was accidentially buried alive here.

The app, which works equally well on the iPad or iPod Touch, has a portability advantage over the PDF version and, presumably, it will be easy to revise and expand. Since I’ll be in town next week, I’ll have a chance to ask Robert what his plans are before I fly to Santiago to complete work on the next edition of Moon Handbooks Chile.

And Now for Something Not Quite Completely Different

Every year, climbers of greater and lesser ability attempt to climb Cerro Aconcagua, the “Roof the Americas,” in Argentina’s Mendoza province. While it’s a walkup, at least by the conventional northern route, its elevation and unpredictable weather have cost the lives of even experienced mountaineers; the cemetery at Puente del Inka, along the highway to Chile, is a somber reminder of the fact.

But how high is the Roof of the Americas? Most contemporary sources agree on 6,962 meters (22,841 feet), but a recent article in the Buenos Aires daily Clarín asks whether it “measures more than the 6,959 meters [22,831 feet] we learned in school?” The latter number was an official figure dating from 1956 and, with that in mind, a team of Argentine climbers is heading toward the summit to re-measure the peak with the latest technology.

Even in such a tectonically active area as the central Andes, it seems unlikely the peak could have risen so far in such a short time, and my guess is that more recent figures, while unofficial, are more accurate.

I'm Dreaming of a White...Bicentennial

Today is the 200th anniversary of Argentina’s Revolución de Mayo, which started the country’s independence movement, and bicentennial celebrations are underway in Buenos Aires and throughout the country. Half a dozen mountaineers from the city of Mendoza, though, have chosen a unique way to celebrate the bicentennial: a late autumn (early winter, really) assault on the 6,962-meter summit of Cerro Aconcagua, the “Roof of the Americas,” the western hemisphere’s highest peak (pictured above, in summer).

It didn’t go exactly as they expected, though. As the southern hemisphere winter approaches, climbing Aconcagua is a risky adventure even though, by the normal route via the base camp at Plaza de Mulas, it’s a walkup that doesn’t require any special technical climbing skills. Pacific storms drop most of their precipitation on the Chilean side - the province of Mendoza lies in the rain shadow of the Andean range - but that doesn’t mean much in Aconcagua’s case. At that altitude, there’s nothing to stop the wild westerly winds that blow the snow around even when it’s not actually snowing - visibility is limited and temperatures are dangerously cold. When it’s snowing, as it has been today, it’s even dangerous.

That’s why, given the conditions, the group from the Club Andinista Mendoza chose yesterday, the 24th, to attempt the summit - the weather forecast for today was simply too risky. According to the Mendoza daily Diario Uno, the only climber to reach the summit, 35-year-old Luciano Badino, planted an Argentine flag on the peak in commemoration of the bicentennial at 1:30 p.m. Even taking advantage of a window in the weather, he did so in temperatures that reached 40° C (also 40° F) below zero.

Meanwhile, as the climbers descend to the highway that connects Argentina with Chile via the Paso Internacional Los Libertadores, the accumulating snow is a reminder that, soon enough, the southern hemisphere ski season will begin. While the border is open despite occasional backups - yesterday also marked the end of a three-day holiday weekend for Chileans, many of whom traveled into Argentina - the area should soon get crowded with skiers. Just over the border, Chile’s Portillo is one of South America’s top ski resorts; normally, because of the rain shadow effect, Mendoza’s Los Penitentes doesn’t get the same accumulation of snow, but the early indicators are encouraging.

There are, of course, many other elite ski areas in the region, such as Argentina’s Las Leñas, Cerro Chapelco, and Cerro Catedral, and Chile’s Valle Nevado and Nevados de Chillán. As the season advances, look for more information here.

Aconcagua Fees Reach the Roof of the Americas

At 6,962 meters above sea level, Argentina’s Cerro Aconcagua (viewed here from Chile’s Parque Nacional La Campana) is the highest peak not just on the South American continent but in all the Americas. It attracts day hikers, trekkers, and climbers all year, though the approaching summer is most popular (in fact, the official season began on November 1, and will continue until March 15; there is a separate winter season with restrictions).

Everybody who travels from Chile to Argentina over the Libertadores pass catches at least a glimpse of the park and its new visitors center, as Argentina’s Ruta Nacional 7 is its southern boundary. This is where visitors get their park permits, but it’s not quite that simple because customs and immigration - for both Chile and Argentina - are a few kilometers down the road at Los Horcones. It’s necessary to enter Argentina officially before entering the park.

Conditions and fees for visitors to Aconcagua are available at the official website of Parque Provincial Aconcagua, which is not a national park; rather, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mendoza province, which charges foreigners substantially more for park access than in does Argentine nationals. In the December 15 to January 1 peak, for instance foreign climbers pay 1800 pesos (about US$475 per person) for a permit, while their Argentine counterparts pay only 600 pesos. Seven-day trekking permits, to the main base camp, cost 400 pesos (US$105) for foreigners, 130 pesos for Argentines; three-day permits are 210 pesos (US$55) for foreigners, 70 pesos for Argentines. These fees are payable only in the city of Mendoza at the Secretaría de Turismo (Avenida San Martín 1143, 1st floor), but intending visitors can download the expedition permission form as a PDF.

Foreign day hikers now pay 75 pesos (about US$20) except for the short hike to Laguna Horcones (US$2); these fees may be paid at the park visitor center. This is the first season in which there has been any charge whatsoever for Laguna Horcones, which offers excellent glimpses of the peak even for those who never get closer (as the trail photograph suggests). In the past, this has been a doable day trip organized from Santiago but, at present, long overdue road improvements on the almost equally scenic Chilean side are making the trip over the border a slower experience.

On the way back to Santiago, by the way, all immigration and customs procedures - for both Argentina and Chile - take place on the Chilean side of the border.

It’s worth adding that, while Aconcagua’s summit is literally a walkup - there is no technical climbing - the altitude and weather make it one of the world’s most dangerous peaks, and climbers die almost every season. Prime physical condition is essential for anyone even dreaming about the summit and, even then, they have to recognize when to turn back.