Off-road Rental Research

Recent research has confirmed a long held belief that hire cars have greater clearance and attack and departure angles than one's own gallopy, and even if you have slightly misjudged exactly where that sump plate is, the ensuing thud is also decidedly less painful.

Research was undertaken by Raul* and I... objective:
Day 1 - go play in snow and take in some high Andes,
Day 2 - head Argentinawards, let's find us a dam, and so we began our 4x4 trial.

Day 1: I'll be British now and get the discussion of the weather out the way... Wouldn't say so the last few glorious days but a few days after getting back to Chile we had the first snow of the year. So of course we needed to go play! Upped and offed to Valle Nevado, one of the ski spots up the hill to take in some views, throw a snow ball or two and build a snow woman. Don't fear, I will swicth back to South African and not bore you with train schedule problems. What are trains?

Valle Nevado ski slopes





















Snow woman... yes probably why I didn't do fine art or cosmetic surgery... reminds me of a Calvin comic "True genius is never understood in its own lifetime". I blame Raul ;)
















Our Puegeot 4x4 concept car (aka 206) lurking on the slopes of La Parva, hmmm a little petrol engine doesn't have that much oomph at 3200m when you want to get out of that spot.


Day 2: About 45 minutes outside of Santiago the road turns pear-shaped as you head east up the Cajon del Maipo just south of the city. Few k's after pearshapedness hang a left and switch to 4WD mode as the road climbs up slowly to one of the older dams in Chile, emblase el Yeso. Not knowing what awaited us, the thought did go through my head to turn around for fear of doing the Pirellis on a road that seemed to have slim hitchike potential far from a cell transmitter. I am glad that we persisted. Everyone says it's beautiful, but to arrive on a fairly still, clear day and take in the turquoise, whites and blues was really special.





















Our rugged offroader taking in some dust










On arrival at Embalse el Yeso










A bit futher round the dam














South side of the dam a monster scree slope, beautiful colours that seem not to have come out well in the photie, maybe it's just my eyes that are wrong... hmmm prefer the way they see things


Standing in the mountains with such beauty is a good way to be reminded of how small we are and yet what responsibility we hold... hhhmmm strange contradiction.

Hope your week holds a Yeso in stall.

p.s. Puegeot, you can do away with that metal thing at the bottom in the front for the production model, it kept getting in the way.

* Names and plates have been changed to protect the not so innocent