Hiking to Aconcagua Base Camp (‘Confluence’) is a five-hour, 14km round trip. The trail head is about a three hour drive from Mendoza, so the trek is doable as a (longish) day trip. It’s well worth the effort, with spectacular views of the highest peak in South America.

Planning the Trek: Beware the Weekend!

A relaxing holiday takes as much planning as a busy holiday. And as much as weekends might not matter to YOU when you’re on holiday, they’re still relevant for the city you’re in. And when it comes to Mendoza, weekends – and especially Sundays – are spent with family, not working. Meaning just about everything’s closed – even things that you might think would be open to cater for tourists. Car rental agencies, Provincial Park offices… they’re all closed. Which just about derailed our plans to visit Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America.

Luckily, a last-minute visit to the tourism office (which was open!) helped us find a ‘non-mainstream’ rental car (at a fraction of the cost of Budget or Hertz), and confirmed we didn’t need to visit the Park Office in person to get a permit (more on that later).

Buying Our Park Permit

In order to do the hike to Confluence you have to buy a park permit, which theoretically you can do online (as per the tourism office). We say theoretically because unfortunately (and somewhat bizarrely) the system doesn’t accept credit cards – foreign or domestic. You must use a bank card, or use one of the local money transfer apps in order to pay the fee.

We tried every trick under the sun to pay the fee all Sunday afternoon, and were quickly running out of options (This was after we had already rented the car). Luckily, Jas was able to contact his second-cousin-once-removed who lives in Buenos Aires, who arranged for her daughter to use her bank card to pay the fee(!!) It was all sorted out about an hour before we arrived at the park. Whew!

See the ‘In a Nutshell’ section below for a better and less-stressful way of purchasing your permits.

Renting a Car 

Just as we ran into problems buying the park permit for the trek, we also struggled with renting a car. While there are many mainstream US rental companies here in Mendoza, if you want to rent a car from them on the weekend, your only option is to make your way to the airport, which is about a half hour away by taxi. On top of that, the cars are expensive! We were seeing prices that were easily over $100 USD per day, and then you had to add the insurance. We knew there had to be a better way.

Luckily, when we visited the tourist information office, there were a few flyers for local car rentals. This turned out to be the perfect solution; we contacted Rodrigo at Mendoza Car Rental via WhatsApp (+54 92616 79 6289), which meant the conversation was automatically translated to Spanish (for him) and English (for us). He was happy to drop the car off at our Airbnb the night before the trek, and we were able to arrange to drop the car off at the airport on our way out of Mendoza five or six days later. (In fact, the drop off was kind of hilarious, because we just parked the car in the Airport parking lot and then dropped the keys off at a cafe in the Airport). The car wasn’t new by any means, but it was reliable and comfortable, and less than half the price of the big guys. (I’m sure we probably still paid more than we had to, but it worked for us).

The Drive to the Trail Head

It’s 185km and about a three hour drive from Mendoza to the Aconcagua park entrance. We retraced our steps back towards the Chilean border down National Route No 7. We stopped at Uspallata for breakfast on the way.

As you’re getting closer to the park entrance, you’ll drive right past the Argentinian border control – don’t panic 😊. You’re still in Argentina. You don’t need to stop at border control on the way back either. There was a police checkpoint on the highway a little ways past that, but they took one look at us, asked ‘Aconcagua?’ and waved us through.

Confluence: Hiking to Aconcagua Base Camp

The hike to Confluence, the lowest of three base camps for those attempting a summit of Aconcagua, South America’s highest mountain, is a five-hour, 14km round trip from the trail head.

And we’re so glad we were able to do it. For most of the trek up, you’re staring at the face of Aconcagua. It’s not a particularly steep hike, but with the altitude we found ourselves more breathless than we expected to be. The hike STARTS at almost 3,000 meters, and goes up a further 600m from there. So when we say it took our breath away, we kinda mean it. (OK, that was terrible).

When you finally reach Base Camp, you can reward yourself with a beer if that’s what floats your boat (Jas) before making your way back down.

Didn’t avail ourselves of las mulas, but we were tempted!

Other Nearby Attractions: The Inca Bridge

The drive out to the park is spectacular, and on the way home we stopped at the ‘Inca Bridge’, which is a natural rock bridge that apparently the Incas used, and later became known for a luxury hotel with hot springs that was – wait for it – wiped out in an earthquake at some point. 

There’s no ‘formal’ charge to stop at the bridge, but there’s a quasi-official woman in the parking lot that you can give a ‘donation’ to for – I guess – watching your car for you(?)

In a Nutshell: Hiking To Aconcagua Base Camp

• The Confluence/Aconcagua Base Camp hike can be done in one (longish) day from Mendoza.
• Renting a car from one of the big US agencies (Hertz/Budget/etc) is very expensive – over $120 USD per day. You’re much better off finding a ‘local’ agency in Mendoza. If you’re staying at an Airbnb, ask your host – they probably know someone. Or look for flyers at the tourist office. We paid less than $60 USD per day for our car, and we probably could have paid even less if we’ d been a bit more organized.
• You must have a park permit in order to hike to Confluence. While theoretically you can buy the permit online (https://www.mendoza.gov.ar/aconcagua), you would need a local Argentinian to assist you with payment, as it only accepts an Argentinian debit card or a local payment app (with linked debit card) to do so. A much better solution is to visit the Parks Administration office in Mendoza and buy your ticket in person. The office is located at the North-east corner of Parque General San Martín, and is only open 8:30-1pm Mon-Fri. So plan ahead!
• Permits for the trek are based on timed entries, with the latest departure at 11am. Allow at least three hours for the drive to the park entrance. We left at 7:30am and got there at 10:45, with a stop for a nice (extremely inexpensive) breakfast in Uspallata, the last town before the park.
• Earth Trekkers have a great page with more information about the hike itself which we relied on for our trip planning.