The Golden Van: Preparing To Cross

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Preparing To Cross

“We are badasses,” Layne said. And she’s right we are, a little bit as it does take some badassery to get to 15,700 feet on a dirt road…

…and to get back down the other side to Chile in one piece in our 9400 pound Promaster, GANNET2 from Key West.

But there’s a story that begins at 5500 feet the day before. You knew that right? Wilderness wild camping looking at the low gray clouds obscuring the mountains.

It was cold and gray and no way we wanted to climb up these fog shrouded mountains. We’d have no views and the roads are crappy enough without having problems seeing where we were going.

So we drove up to Las Flores the last village before taking the highway to Chile.

Fog. This did not look promising.

But when we arrived in Las Flores the sun miraculously came out and the gas station attendant was as excited as we were. “It’s been gray and cloudy” he said as we filled with regular gas (Super 95 in Argentina at $3:50 a gallon).

It was too late in the afternoon to cross the border, a hundred miles to get to Chile and half of it gravel, so we went looking for somewhere to spend the night.

Las Flores was a pretty town in the afternoon sunshine.

We went looking for a wild camp above a nearby artificial lake.

It was a windy afternoon as you can see.

These crazy formations are wind sculpted clay.

What a wild place to spend the night.

Wind blown spume flew across the water. We watched and wondered how we had found this place.

Rusty wanted to go for walk.

We were ticked up between the rocks to try to stay out of the wind gusts barreling down the canyon. It was pretty comfortable in our well insulated van.

This is Argentina do everywhere you go you’ll see a fire ring. They will come out here with some wood, start a fire, put a metal grill over the fire and cook some meat for dinner. It’s what you do.

He loves the cold and he trotted along with his tail up but bending to the gusts. He gets younger the colder it is.

Not a bad view.

Paso Agua Negra is a summer border crossing likely to close in a month thanks to have snowfall at altitude. Coming from Argentina to exit the country near Las Flores on Highway 150 and if you plan to spend the night en route to let Argentine customs know. They tell Chilean customs so no one mounts a search party for you if you don’t show. A hundred miles later you reach Chilean customs in the other side of the mountains. The crossing is up to you.

We were a bit nervous about this journey but fortunately we had been up Punta Olimpica in Peru on pavement but to a similar altitude. Here we were facing fifty miles of gravel and some serious climbing in these mountains.

Meanwhile we had to pack up and head for the border office outside Las Flores. But first layne had found a stop in the town of Rodeo.

The adobe village put me in mind of New Mexico but the name made me want to hum the music by Aaron Copeland.

Layne had found a place to buy cooked food to go (para llevar) which seemed like a good place to load up to save cooking on the crossing. We weren’t sure who was going to get altitude sickness in the next couple of days.

Load your tray and pay by the kilo.

We got two days of meals for twelve bucks.

Layne thought it was the best restaurant deal we’d seen in Argentina. But they don’t smile these Argentinians.

Time to go, Chile beckoned on such a sunny day.

One kilometer to the Argentine customs post and fifty five miles to the frontier on the mountain top.

Last photo before we check out.

Twenty minutes later we were on our way. We had a postage stamp sized receipt with the number 27 on it which we were to hand in to Chilean customs to confirm our arrival over the hill.

We were on our way to Chile.

I set the trip to figure out some statistics. We took five hours to get to our campsite 80 miles away in Chile. Our fuel consumption fell to 10 mpg on the gravel averaging 15 mph.