Things to do
8-
Cristo Redentor
A bronze Christ raised on the old pass at 3,832 metres in 1904 to mark the settlement of the border dispute with Argentina, cast from melted down cannon. The dirt road up from the tunnel mouth opens only in the summer months and suits a high vehicle, and traffic to Mendoza now runs through the tunnel below.
-
Curimón
A village outside San Felipe grown around a Franciscan convent founded in 1727, the oldest religious house in the Aconcagua valley, with a museum of colonial painting and silver in its cloister. The church has been rebuilt after earthquake damage, opening hours are short, and a small community still lives in the convent.
-
Hotel Portillo
The yellow hotel standing alone above Laguna del Inca, open since 1949 and still selling by the ski week, with the lifts starting at the door. It shuts outside the winter season, has no village around it, and guests eat to a fixed timetable in a single dining room.
-
Hotel Termas de Jahuel
A thermal hotel at about 1,200 metres on a shelf above the Aconcagua valley, drawing the same spring water it has used since the nineteenth century and facing the cordillera from its terraces. The climb up from Los Andes takes twenty minutes, and paths run out through native scrub from the grounds.
-
Laguna del Inca
A lake about three kilometres long at 2,700 metres below the Portillo slopes, with no visible outlet and a colour that shifts through the day. It freezes across in winter, the shore path from the hotel takes roughly an hour each way in summer, and the legend of an Inca princess buried in the water gives it the name.
-
Parque Andino Juncal
A privately owned conservation park of some 13,000 hectares at the head of the Juncal valley, protecting the glaciers that feed the Aconcagua river and listed as a Ramsar wetland. Entry is by prior booking with the owning family, the access track leaves the international road, and every trail runs at altitude.
-
Portillo
A ski area at 2,880 metres on the Argentine road, run as a single hotel with a fixed weekly intake and no town attached, which keeps the slopes among the emptiest in the Andes. Two slingshot lifts fire skiers straight up avalanche prone faces, the season runs from June into early October, and day access is capped.
-
Santuario de Santa Teresa
The shrine at Auco holding the remains of the first Chilean saint, a Carmelite who died at nineteen in 1920 and was canonised in 1993. Pilgrim traffic peaks around her feast in July, the modern temple stands above the older monastery buildings, and the site lies about ten kilometres from the town.