Ischigualasto and Talampaya

30·04´59.77" S 67·54´59.92 " W

Dan: I believe there are 11 or 12 major, get-off-work holidays in Argentina. This week we had Flag Day. Taking advantage of the three-day weekend, along with everyone else, we got on a bus and got out of town. We headed over to the next province, San Juan. We stayed in a little town called Valle Fertil, which I guess was slightly more fertile than the desert surrounding it. We took and all-day excursion to one provincial, and one national park in the area. The first one, Ischigualasto, a very hard to spell and pronounce park is more commonly know as Valley of the Moon. It is a sort of badlands that they claim is the world’s largest dinosaur graveyard. The other park was right next to it but took about an hour to get to. Talampaya was more desert, cactus and funky rocks, many of them with a reddish color. It was nice to finally get out in the nature, even if it was with a tour guide. Both of these places require accompaniment to protect the area and keep people from stealing fossils and cool rocks. We got to see petroglyphs and some wildlife. The whole morning was sunny, windless and silent. The wind picked up later on but we still actually felt warm at times and may have gotten some much needed vitamin D.

Click on any of these pictures to make them bigger.

My very small wife.

This little fellow is a guanaco, cousin to the llama.

Here are some pictures of his ancestors.

If you enlarge this picture you can look between the trees, on the left side to find a couple of gigantic birds called ñandúes, or rhea.