Mendoza Province is a prime outdoor recreation area, offering climbing and hiking, cycling and mountain biking, skiing, and white-water rafting and kayaking. It’s possible to organize many (though not all) activities through city agencies listed below, but other providers have on-site services in the Andes along RN 7 (the main route to Chile) and the Río Mendoza. Most operators handle more than one activity.

For specific information on climbing Cerro Aconcagua and support services, see the Parque Provincial Aconcagua section.

Since the realignment of RN 7 (the Panamericana to Chile) for expansion of a hydroelectric and irrigation reservoir on the Río Mendoza, Cacheuta has become an end-of-the-road destination for its hot springs hotel—other places that depended on through traffic have closed—and the rafting company on the river’s lower reaches. At 1,237 meters above sea level, Cacheuta is 36 kilometers southwest of Mendoza.

Since RN 7’s southerly realignment, it’s longer (in distance) but shorter (in time) to Potrerillos, the upper Río Mendoza’s white-water rafting, kayaking, and river-boarding center. Now 53 kilometers from Mendoza—about eight kilometers farther than it used to be—Potrerillos (pop. about 300, elev. 1,351 meters) is growing because the Embalse de Potrerillos, a hydroelectric project, has relocated displaced people in sharp new houses with fine views and finer conveniences than they’ve ever had before.

Whether once-isolated rural people will prosper in their new village environment on an international highway is another issue entirely.

From the west, the long lines of Lombardy poplars flanking RN 7 offer a dramatic approach to Uspallata, a crossroads village in an area that, thanks to its resemblance to the central-Asian highlands, enjoyed 131 minutes of cinematic fame as the base for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s movie (and Brad Pitt vehicle) of Heinrich Harrer’s memoir Seven Years in Tibet. Annaud airlifted in yak extras from Montana for the filming, which journalist Orville Schell chronicled in his Virtual Tibet (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000).

Irrigated by the Atuel and Diamante Rivers, vineyards and orchards still survive within San Rafael’s city limits, heart of a prosperous wine-and-fruit-producing area southeast of the city of Mendoza. Recreationally, the city can be a base for rafting on the Atuel and Diamante as well as for other activities in the nearby Andean foothills.

Chile’s underrated capital of Santiago offers fine hotels and restaurants, plus a surrounding landscape where (at some times of the year) it’s possible to ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. Wine-oriented visitors can almost simultaneously enjoy the port city of Valparaíso (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and its neighboring beach resort Viña del Mar, the ski centers of Portillo and Valle Nevado, and rafting on the Río Maipo.

This itinerary tours Chile’s favorite vacation area, the lakes and volcanoes south of the Río Biobío. All along the route, it offers a wide range of outdoor activities, including hiking, climbing, cycling, mountain biking, and white-water rafting. The weather here is fickle and you may need to be flexible in organizing your activities to take best advantage of the finest days.

Barely an hour southeast of downtown Santiago, the Río Maipo has cut a deep canyon through more than 70 kilometers of the Andean foothills before it meanders onto the plains near the town of Pirque. Once the border of the Kollasuyu, the Inka empire’s southernmost limits, the Cajón del Maipo (Canyon of the Maipo) is one of urban Santiago’s great escapes, barely an hour from the Plaza de Armas.

In the midst of a multiyear struggle to divert a natural gas pipeline from Argentina, the Andean precordillera of the Astorga family’s former fundo Cascada de la Ánimas became one of Chile’s first private nature reserves in 1995. Only two years later, though, did the owners manage to definitively defeat the pipeline.

In practice, the official designation hasn’t made much difference, but it allows them to continue, without disruption, the activities-oriented recreation that has made the 3,600-hectare property a prime destination for hikers, riders, and especially white-water rafters and kayakers.

About 32 kilometers west of Melipeuco, Cunco is the gateway for rafting on the Río Allipén, a roughly three-hour excursion (US$18 pp) with German-run Esmeralda Raft (tel. 099/8467617, www.esmeraldaraft.de). From late December to early April, you’ll find them on the Allipén bridge about five kilometers south of town on the Lago Colico road.