Traveling to Portillo was quite easy, as I bought a ticket with TurBus (described here), but once I arrived at the resort I was stuck. The official transportation costs $160 if scheduled from the resort’s front desk. I was hoping to find a more economical way to get back to Santiago and preferred not to hitchhike (I met a Canadian who did this successfully). Thankfully I met two extremely friendly Australians who were scheduling a departure with a ski outfitting company in Santiago. We split the cost of the $140 shuttle back to Santiago.
To say the mountain road up to Portillo is curvy is quite an understatement. One can only imagine how treacherous it must be to ascend this route in a snowstorm. The mountain pass to and from Mendoza Argentina is such a steep climb that the road is cut into dramatic traverses. The route is well traveled by large semi-trucks, but I saw very few passenger cars. This is certainly not like the San Francisco-to-Tahoe weekend commute.
What’s worse, the few cars and passenger buses are not at all afraid of passing the slower moving commercial trucks. This can be terrifying! But the driver of our shuttle bus claimed he had been transporting people on this route for many years, so I felt at ease when he sped around a tractor-trailer and maneuvered around a tight curve (blindly) to beat any oncoming traffic. He told me he did not even know how to ski, but before our departure from Portillo I jokingly suggested he might be good at skiing down snowy mountain roads in his van. He agreed.
Apparently not everyone is in the hands of a good driver like ours. I have no idea how long this rusty relic of a truck had been here, but it was a stark reminder of how brutal this road might be in more treacherous weather.
One of the ski lifts crosses the path of the road over several traverses.
More curves from the ski lift…
There were more than 30 curves up/down the pass.
Let’s not forget the amazing view of the mountains from the road.
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