WHAT: A visit to the Cerro de los 7 colores; the colourful rainbow hill of Uspallata WHERE: 10 km east of Uspallata, in the middle of Argentina near the border of Chile HOW MUCH: It's free. There's literally nobody and as it's along a route and reachable, you can just drive towards the place HOW LONG: The colourful hillside is small, so a half an hour would do
See this road above? Brilliant, isn’t it? The surroundings of Uspallata are superb for sure. It’s the reason that director Arnaud chose this area for shooting his ‘Seven years in Tibet’, after he couldn’t get a visum for Tibet itself. It’s just a funny idea that this small, Argentinian town – situated 1,5 hour west of Mendoza near the border of Chile – has been the base for the large crew of this iconic movie.
Cafe Tibet, smack in the middle of the town of Uspallata, is a reminder of that era. But apart from this stop and a couple of other cafes, there’s little entertainment in town and therefore little need for a long stopover.
This was a bit of a problem for us, as we had to wait a while before the mountain pass would open again. This road towards the border starts right outside Uspallata, but is often closed due to the heavy snowfall.
Luckily we heard about a rainbow-like mountain right outside of town – rumour enough to feed a bit of exploration!
We took the winding road #9 up the national park and drove a drilling, brain shockingly 10 km up east. Suddenly we saw the hillsides changing in many gorgeous pastel kind of colours. Although the area was less intense in terms of colours compared to other famous Andean rainbow mountains, such as around Salta and Cuzco in Peru, this area still felt super special. Probably mainly because there was just nobody around. Nobody! How cool is that!
If you want to, you can even climb all the way to the top of the hill. Bring a picnic and just enjoy the sounds of the mountains. A great way to kill of some time for sure! Also starring a beautiful drive back to town – with those ‘Seven years in Tibet’ mountains in the backdrop.
Here’s where to find that colourful mountain range! ↓
