Puente del Inca
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Puente del Inca, Spanish for "the Inca's Bridge", is a natural arch that forms a bridge over the Vacas River, the name of the origin of the Mendoza River. It is located in Mendoza Province, Argentina near the border with Chile, between Las Cuevas and Punta de Vacas.
Puente del Inca is also the name of the nearby hot springs. Scientists speculate[citation needed] that interaction of extreme elements like ice and hot springs was involved in the origin of the formation. They suppose that in ancient times ice covered the river and acted as support for avalanches of snow, dust and rocks. So the dust over the ice over the river would have served as a path for the sulfurous water and petrified the surface, so when the snow melted, the bridge remained by itself.
Charles Darwin was one of the visitors to this natural marvel, and made some drawings of the bridge with great stalactites.[citation needed]
In the early twentieth century there was a big Thermal Resort and Spa that used the hot springs to cure some illneses.[citation needed] There was a train station that is still standing there, and tourists arrived by train to the resort. This was one of the last Argentine stations of the Trans-Andean railroads before the train continued into Chile, traveling through a long tunnel under the Andes.
