The Casuchas del Rey or Casuchas de la Cordillera are a string of small mountain shelters made of stone masonry along the route of the Uspallata Pass of the Principal Cordillera in the Andes of Chile and Argentina. [1] The shelters were built to improve the intra-colonial postal system of the Spanish Empire.
The shelters were created following the designs of Ambrosio O'Higgins in 1766 at a time when Cuyo was still part of the Captaincy General of Chile. [2] Each shelter had a capacity for about thirty persons and stock of supplies inside. [1] [2] This included yerba mate as mate was highly valued by those who frequented the cold Andean highlands. [2]
Two events are credited to have triggered the construction of the mountain shelters, first O'Higgins near-death while crossing the Andes in 1763 and the Seven Years' War that made improvements to overland communication an imperative as seaborne communications between Buenos Aires and Lima could be intercepted and while the traditional route across Potosí was overly long. [3]
German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas crossed the Andes in 1835 following the Casuchas del Rey. The 60 paintings and sketches he made on his way have served to locate the remains of the shelters. [3]
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 km (5,530 mi) long, 200 to 700 km wide, and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
The Inca road system was the most extensive and advanced transportation system in pre-Columbian South America. It was about 40,000 kilometres (25,000 mi) long. The construction of the roads required a large expenditure of time and effort.
Monte Fitz Roy is a mountain in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile. It is located in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, near El Chaltén village and Viedma Lake. It was first climbed in 1952 by French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone.
San Martín de los Andes is a city in the south-west of the province of Neuquén, Argentina, serving as the administration centre of the Lácar Department. Lying at the foot of the Andes, on the Lácar lake, it is considered one of the main tourism destinations in the province. The National Route 40 runs to the city, connecting it with important touristic points in the south of the province, such as Lanín and Nahuel Huapí national parks.
Cerro Bonete is a mountain in the north of the province of La Rioja, Argentina, near the provincial border with Catamarca. Its summit is 6,759 m above mean sea level, making it the fifth-highest separate mountain in the Americas. SRTM data disproves the frequently-made claim that its summit is 6,872 m above sea level.
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Chile and Argentina, is the world's second largest contiguous extrapolar ice field. It is the bigger of two remnant parts of the Patagonian Ice Sheet, which covered all of southern Chile during the last glacial period, locally called the Llanquihue glaciation.
The Crossing of the Andes was one of the most important feats in the Argentine and Chilean wars of independence, in which a combined army of Argentine soldiers and Chilean exiles invaded Chile crossing the Andes range separating Argentina from Chile, leading to Chile's liberation from Spanish rule.
International relations between the Republic of Chile and the Argentine Republic have existed for decades. The border between the two countries is the world's third-longest international border, which is 5,300 km (3,300 mi) long and runs from north to south along the Andes mountains. Although both countries gained their independence during the South American wars of liberation, during much of the 19th and the 20th century, relations between the countries were chilly as a result of disputes over the border in Patagonia. Despite this, Chile and Argentina have never been engaged in a war with each other. In recent years, relations have improved. Argentina and Chile have followed quite different economic policies. Chile has signed free trade agreements with countries such as China, the United States, Canada, South Korea, as well as European Union, and it's a member of the APEC. Argentina belongs to the Mercosur regional free trade area. In April 2018, both countries suspended their membership from the UNASUR.
Nevado San Francisco, or Cerro San Francisco, is a stratovolcano on the border between Argentina and Chile, located just southeast of San Francisco Pass. It is considered extinct and is one of the several 6,000 m (19,700 ft) peaks in the area, of which the chief is the Ojos del Salado. It is on the border of 2 provinces: Argentinean province of Catamarca; Chilean province of Copiapo.
Puyehue and Cordón Caulle are two coalesced volcanic edifices that form a major mountain massif in Puyehue National Park in the Andes of Ranco Province, in the South of Chile. In volcanology this group is known as the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (PCCVC). Four volcanoes constitute the volcanic group or complex, the Cordillera Nevada caldera, the Pliocene Mencheca volcano, Cordón Caulle fissure vents and the Puyehue stratovolcano.
Precordillera is a Spanish geographical term for hills and mountains lying before a greater range, similar to foothills. The term is derived from cordillera —literally "pre-mountain range"—and applied usually to the Andes.
The 1902 Arbitral award of the Andes between Argentina and Chile was a British arbitration in 1902 that established the present-day boundaries between Argentina and Chile. In northern and central Patagonia, the borders were established between the latitudes of 40° and 52° S as an interpretation of the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina.
The Bicentennial of Chile took place on September 18, 2010. The celebration commemorates the beginning of the Independence process in Chile, with the first Government Junta of Chile on September 18, 1810, and Chile's becoming a free and independent country eight years later. Several activities were prepared for this occasion by the Chilean Government.
The history of yerba mate stretches back to pre-Columbian Paraguay. It is marked by a rapid expansion in harvest and consumption in the Spanish South American colonies but also by its difficult domestication process that began in the mid 17th century and again later when production was industrialized around 1900.
Ambrosio Bernardo O'Higgins y O'Higgins, 1st Marquess of Osorno born Ambrose Bernard O'Higgins, was an Irish-Spanish colonial administrator and a member of the O'Higgins family.
The Altiplano Basin is a sedimentary basin within the Andes in Bolivia and Peru. The basin is located on the Altiplano plateau between the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental. Over-all the basin has evolved through time in a context of horizontal shortening of Earth's crust. The great thickness of the sediments accumulated in the basin is mostly the result of the erosion of Cordillera Oriental.
La Negra Formation is a geologic formation of Jurassic age, composed chiefly of volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks, located in the Coast Range of northern Chile. The formation originated in marine and continental (terrestrial) conditions, and bears evidence of submarine volcanism as well as large explosive eruptions. The volcanism of La Negra Formation is thought to have lasted for about five million years.
Principal Cordillera is the Andean mountain range that makes up the boundary between Central Chile and neighbouring areas of Argentina. It is also a continental divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific watersheds. It extends in a north–south direction in the Argentine provinces of La Rioja, San Juan and Mendoza and the Chilean regions of Valparaíso, Santiago, O'Higgins and Maule. To the east of the Principal Cordillera lies the Frontal Cordillera which is fully in Argentina. Aconcagua, the tallest mountain outside Asia, lies in the Principal Cordillera.
Heber Eugenio Jara Valladares, known as Eugenio Jara, was a Chilean football manager and footballer.
The Southern Patagonian ice field dispute is a border dispute between Argentina and Chile over the delineation of the boundary line between the two countries on the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, a large expanse of glaciers located in the Patagonian Andes, which is the largest non-polar continental ice field with land access. It is called continental ice in Argentina and southern ice field in Chile, to differentiate it from the northern ice field. As of 2023, the Argentine-Chilean border in this sector is still pending of defition acording to the 1998 agreement signed by both countries.