A spooky abandoned hotel at the foot of the Andes in Argentina closed its doors over 70 years ago but still sees visitors to this day. The eerie building is now the starting point for a tour which leads to the memorial for those who died in a tragic plane accident there in 1972.
As many as 29 people were killed when Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into the mountains, while 16 passengers survived by turning to cannibalism, eating parts of the bodies of the dead.
But the Sosneado Hotel itself closed well before the disaster in the 1950s.
It opened in 1938, after Frank Romero Day, then-minister of industry and public works in Argentina, imagined a luxury tourist project next to the mountains in the area where he was born.
But the resort was a three-hour drive from the nearest city and in winter it was difficult to get there meaning the accounts did not add up and it was abandoned in 1953.
The hotel has remained abandoned ever since but did have caretakers for a short while after it closed.
Francisco Salonia, who works in the area and runs the company Aventura en la Montana, told Spanish newspaper ABC: “The hotel was fully operational for ten to twelve years.
“Then it began to decline, mainly because people stopped going there. For a while there were caretakers until it was completely abandoned.
“Today, the ruins of a concrete, stone and iron building with no roof remain. It is used as a shelter for the people who still go to the hot springs, although the water is not as hot as it used to be. It’s about 200 km from San Rafael, and 50 km from the small town of El Sosneado on a road in poor condition.”
Salonia runs the trips from the abandoned hotel to the crash site in the Andes and says the tours attract visitors from around the world.
He added: “We go to the place where the plane crashed. It takes two days of six or seven hours, on foot or on horseback, about twelve kilometres per day between mountains, trails and rivers. In total it is about twenty-four kilometres.
“At the abandoned hotel we take the horses, the pack mules and from there, we go to a camp on the first day, and then we go to the wreckage of the plane.”
