Ten years ago, I sat in the back of a bus, staring out the window as the driver wound his way up dozens of twisty curves along the Trans-Andean highway toward Portillo, Chile, a ski resort deep in the Andes along the border of Argentina. Near the ski area, the highway crosses under a two-person chairlift. For a moment, there’s this strange and wonderful juxtaposition between truck drivers on their way to an international border and skiers heading to their next powder run.
When we pulled into Portillo’s hotel, a welcoming yellow box at the base of a striking alpine lake called Laguna del Inca, a huge St. Bernard waddled out to greet us. It was August 2012, and my husband, Dan, and I were there for our honeymoon—we’d gotten married the previous spring during a massive snowstorm in Tahoe. Both zealous skiers, the idea of skiing in the summer was too novel to pass up. It would just take 24 hours of hauling ski bags through airports and not sleeping on overnight flights to get there.