Barely awake after a 2 a.m. start from the van, we ground out another long approach to the snow line above El Chaltén, Argentina. A postcard view of Cerro Torre provided some extra motivation, as well as an appropriate sense of scale. Photo: Valerio Arquint

Straight Line

Rags to Riches on Argentina’s Ruta 40

“I think our best hope is a good—” A cold gust of Patagonian wind cuts off the rest of Valerio’s sentence. “A what?” I yell back through the open window of our idling Mitsubishi camper van. “A good overnight freeze,” he concludes in his thick Swiss accent, caked in mud from his shoes right up to his Cheshire cat grin.

I’m not convinced. Maybe we shouldn’t have talked our way through that police checkpoint after all. “Too much snow? At this elevation? On a flat highway?” We scoffed as we drove away. How serious could a negotiable road closure really be?

Turns out, it wasn’t the snow we needed to worry about. It’s doing exactly what we thought it would. Melting. Into the road. The road made of dirt. Scratch that: the road made of mud.

Mud in which our 89 horsepower, bald tire-equipped, two-wheel drive van is now stuck. Axle deep. Shit.


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