Mendoza, Pre-Trip

Mendoza, Oct 27-30

On Friday evening we attended a lovely dinner with friends at Cavas Wine Lodge, a beautiful hotel not far from our house. Later, when Knox went to retrieve the Amarok, he found we had a very flat front tire. Thankfully, the hotel staff changed the tire for the spare in no time and we were on our way home. Obviously, however, we needed to have the tire repaired and possibly purchase new tires, given the upcoming 6000+ kilometers of driving. But, we reasoned it was probably fortunate to have happened before the trip, instead of during the trip.

We woke up on Saturday to ZONDA weather in Mendoza. These highly windy events are relatively common here at the foot of the Andes Mountains, but in recent months they have begun to worsen. If you’re interested in learning more, Knox, of course, has a very detailed paper he found and will be happy to share with you if you ask him (lol). The wind started in earnest mid-afternoon and we were hearing of high winds elsewhere, but didn’t really experience anything serious at our house.  The power went out a few times, as is usual in these storms, came back on, and went off again, but we didn’t really think much about it.

By Sunday morning, in addition to the Zonda continuing to blow and the power outages becoming more frequent and sustained, we began to learn about the serious gas shortage in Argentina…stories of long lines, closed stations, high prices, and in much of Mendoza, no gas available anywhere, and no end in sight. After talking with friends and reading the news, I, for one, began panicking just a bit: how was it that after all these months of planning our big drive south, we would find ourselves stranded at home due to a lack of gas?? And so, being the planner I am,  an alternative route naturally came to mind:  Chile HAS gas.  If we could somehow find enough gas to get to Chile over the pass, west of Mendoza (probably just one tankful), we could head south in Chile instead of going with the original plan to drive south on the Argentine side. 

As the afternoon wore on and the power went out completely, I finished planning our contingency using mobile phone data (thankfully very cheap here). The weather was still pretty nasty with tons of branches down and horrible dust in the air. Not pleasant to be outside.  But I ventured out into the yard with the dogs at some point and realized I was not just seeing Zonda in the air. I was seeing smoke, and lots of it, filling the otherwise clear dusk sky and moving easterly over the house! Turns out, the Zonda had ignited several very bad fires in and around Mendoza, including one large one burning just 10 kilometers from us on the other side of the highway that runs west of our house. Needless to say, this was not really the turn of events we expected or wanted. Knox suggested we pack a “go-bag” just in case, and we monitored the situation via TV news until they cut the power completely and by cellphone after that.

By Monday morning, after very little sleep, thankfully most of the fires were contained, but several communities had been evacuated nearby, and further west, many folks lost everything. Knox went to have the tire repaired and in search of gas. The culprit was just a small nail and the repair took just a few minutes. But still no gas, and very few open stations all with queues so long Knox was not game to even contemplate waiting. And, to complicate matters further,  because of a long weekend in Chile, more than 20,000 Chileans had been visiting Mendoza as tourists when the storm struck, and they closed the mountain pass due to weather, so all of these Chileans were seeking fuel for their cars for their return trips and waiting for the pass to open also. Perfect! Just as we were thinking of going directly to Chile ourselves. Obviously, the prospect of waiting at the border with 20,000 extra people was far from ideal.

Mendoza, Oct 31

We awoke to a beautiful, clear Mendoza spring morning. The Zonda had passed. Knox left early on a mission to find gas for the Amarok. The government had apparently begun taking measures to resolve the situation, and although there were still lots of lines and closed stations, our confidence in the possibility of scoring the fuel we needed began to grow: just one tank to go via Chile and the equivalent of two tanks (we had purchased a number of gas containers to bring on the trip anyway) to go south as planned while waiting for the gas crisis to subside. Finally, success! Knox called me and said to follow in my car with the rest of the containers. The queues were long, and they were selling only 10,000 pesos per car (about a 1/3 tank), so we both went through the line at our nearby station several times and after a few hours, we knew for sure we would be leaving to go south via Argentine route 40.