Las ruins of a luxurious thermal hotelbuilt in 1938, remain silent in the Andes Mountains.
They are in The DreamedSan Rafael, south of Mendoza, just 30 kilometers from the Valley of Tears, the site of the plane crash of the Uruguayans of the Tragedy of the Andes.
He Termas El Sosneado hotel It was built by the Compañía de Hoteles Sudamericanos Ltda, and at the initiative of Frank Romero Day, an engineer from Mendoza, Minister of Industries and Public Works, in the 1930s, also famous for being the creator of the Grape harvest Festival.
Frequented by the high society of the time, it only worked in the summer season and, in the years with greater snowfall, it was unprofitable and inaccessible.
The facilities of the luxurious hotel were abandoned in 1953.
Due to its location, it was difficult to access. To get there, you have to go 60 kilometers of dirt and gravelwhich are bogged down by the flooding of mountain rivers.
70 years after closure, today only part of its structure remains standing. An outdoor stone and concrete pool with thermal waters and its healing properties intact is striking.
In the area, there is also an old abandoned mine, and a few kilometers away the salt flats of the Diamante River, where sport fishing, horseback riding, trekking, mountain biking and 4×4 trips are practiced, among other activities. adventure Turism.
The Tragedy of the Andes
There are doubts regarding whether the Termas El Sosneado hotel, abandoned since 1953, could have been a refuge for the Uruguayan survivors of the Andes Air Tragedy, in case they had undertaken their escape route towards Mendoza and instead of towards Chili.
The ruins are 30 kilometers from the place where the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 occurredand the 72 days of survival narrated by the Netflix film The Snow Society.
And about this there are different theories about this route that demands a walk of just two or three days towards the mountain outposts on the Argentine side.
Expert mountain guides They assure that due to the size and flow of the Sosneado rivers, it would have been impossible to cross if not they did it on horseback or with a raft.
Anyway, Today the expedition to the Valley of Tears is also done on footseeking narrower banks of the rivers and streams of the Andes.
The Mexican guide Ricardo Peña, one of the few who has managed to replicate the escape route to the Maitenes, made by the survivors Roberto Cannesa and Nando Parrado, maintains that Mendoza was closer, but there was no guarantee that it could be a more successful route..
“As Cannesa said, they managed to save themselves by walking to Chile, so it was a perfect plan,” highlights Peña.
And he explains why: “Going east, through the Sosneado, may seem easier because it is downhill, the journey is not as rocky or steep as crossing the Andes.”
According to Peña, who knows the place perfectly and returns every year with tourists, in a joint project with Eduardo Strauch -one of the survivors-, the first part of the descent towards Mendoza would have been simpler.
“They would have crossed the Barroso river because there is snow and you walk over it, but after the difficult thing was to cross the big rivers“, he says.
He describes that if the Uruguayans had stayed on the right side of the Lágrimas River, it would have been more difficult because the terrain becomes very steep and there is a danger of avalanches and falling off a cliff.
Further down is the Atuel River, and at the end of November and December, its water flow increases greatly and it cannot be crossed. “On occasions, we have had to use a rubber boat to cross because it was impossible for a horse to cross that current,” says the guide, who He documented the journey for National Geographic.
And in case any of the survivors had managed to reach the ruins of the hotel, they depended on there being muleteers with their cattle that season.
If they didn’t find a mule driver, they would have had to walk 70 kilometers to the nearest town.
The route to Chile worked. “It is a hard and very dangerous route. It is difficult without mountain equipment to climb the crest of the Andes and go back down to the Maitenes, but incredibly they calculated it well and achieved it,” says Peña.
And it stands out that Cannesa and Parrado had good weather, with clear skies and little wind, and were lucky enough to find the Chilean muleteer Sergio Catalán, who left his animals grazing to go in search of help and save these lost expedition members.
One fact that the 16 survivors have commented in different interviews is that they They believed the pilot’s last words of the plane that crashed in the mountain range, who, dying, told them that they had crossed into Chile, who were in Curicó.
“They thought it was more convenient to head west, because that’s where the Chilean valleys were. Furthermore, when looking east you can see the El Sosneado hill, 5,169 meters high, and it seemed like you had to climb it, although they could have surrounded it to leave,” details Peña.
How to get to the old hotel
The road is accessible only for 4×4 vehiclesdue to the eruption of water currents due to the melting of the mountain range on the dirt road.
Excursions can be booked with local travel agencies, in large adapted vehicles, ideal for this type of outings.
The circuit covers 67 kilometers. Includes a visit to El Sosneado hill, the Laguna and the ruins of the Termal Hotel.
After touring the old hotel facilities, there is the possibility of use the open-air hot spring poolswhich still have therapeutic properties.
The guides of San Rafael explain that the pools suffered a intrusion of cold water currents in its warm sources. It was due to ground movements caused by the Chile earthquake of February 27, 2010which caused the temperature to drop a few degrees.
In the area, tourists usually have lunch, since the journey is very long. Son 209 kilometers of total route, from the city of San Rafael.
Other companies specialized in mountain adventures offer trekking trips to the Atuel Waterfalls, at the source of the river that meanders downstream the entire way that visitors travel.
There’s also horseback riding or walks to where the Uruguayan plane crasheda tour of three days and two nights.
The San Rafael Tourism Directorate indicates that the El Sosneado circuit is enabled from spring to late summer or early fall, as long as weather conditions permit.
What other attractions are there along the way?
The trip starts in the city of San Rafael along Balloffet Avenue to the El Sosneado District. Upon crossing the second bridge over the Diamante River bed, you enter National Route 144 on the right, passing through the Cuesta de Los Terneros, which has a beautiful viewpoint.
Once down the slope, along the same route, on the left, are the Diamond Salt Flatswith its Salt Museum. The salt extraction complex can be visited at this time, every day between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., at a cost of $4,000 per vehicle.
When you return to the path and reach the National Route 40the small town of El Sosneado has the only service station, the last opportunity to load up on fuel and water and food, such as some tasty raw ham sandwiches, to continue the circuit with its majestic landscape and fascinating stories.