Pearson - 1991 November 16.- Left about 2 p.m. for Chile via Paso Puyehue. About 15 km of the road is still awful. About a half hour to get through the Argentine emigration and aduana, and 15 minutes for Chile. The Chilean aduana took away two specimens of bamboo that we had picked, in Chile, only a couple of kms up the road. Some patches of snow along the road near the summit. We stopped at the summit just before the Chilean border, where the habitat looked right for Buneomys mordax: frost-heaved ground, long, dead grass, low bushy ground cover. I found a few faint runways with a couple of Buneomys or Reithrodon droppings in them, plus a few open burrows. Hare droppings. A carnivore dropping had hare bones in it, and an owl pellet contained an Auliscomys. The road map says 1308 m altitude. There are patches of lenga right at the top, not just lenga achaparada. The bamboo doesn't get to the top. Then sampled bamboo on the way down the Chilean side, and passed through a massive flowering of the quila bamboo q.v. The Chilean farmland looked so lush compared with the Argentine side. Arrived Osorno 9 p.m. November 17.- Cloudy or drizzly all day. Drove to Valdivia and tried to locate Milton Gallardo (Sunday), but no success. Lunch on the river front, then drove north to Victoria where we checked into a motel. Between Osorno and Temuco saw lots of quila bamboo but none of it blooming. Also smaller amounts of culeou-like bamboo, none blooming. North of Temuco the quila disappears. Notro (Bmbothrium) is bigger and lusher than in the Bariloche region. One specimen along the street in Osorno had a trunk more than 10 inches DBH. Lush Scotch broom in a few regions. Very little rosa mosqueta, and most of that was north of Temuco. Big fields of planted mustard in bloom. Lots of saw mills along the road: pines, eucalyptus, and natives; saw-logs for lumber, shorter ones (for pulp? or posts?, and fire wood. Paved road all day! Lots of traffic. November 18.- Chile, Victoria to Los Andes. Early morning foggy, then sunny and warm. There was a big couleou-type bamboo behind the motel at Victoria, but we saw hardly any after that. The road was lined for a stretch by very aggressive acacias, and also by pea chaparral. Lots of pine and fir plantations, some in their second cycle. One young eucalyptus plantation of several hundred hectares. The vegetation gradually gets drier. At the Rio Bio Bio the first tile roofs appear and things look more Spanish than farther south. Lots of small lumber mills, lots of fancy new fruit packing plants. Lots of vinyards, some rice. Drove through Santiago and stopped at 8 p.m. along the Rio Aconcagua a little beyond Los Andes. We have not seen a single squashed hare or rabbit in 3 days of driving in Chile. Chimangos all the way; one kite today. November 19.- Los Andes to Mendoza. Left Los Andes about 8:30. Much like going