Triassic Parks

Villa Union in La Rioja province is the promised gateway to two Argentine National Parks which we wanted to visit – Talampaya (La Rioja province), and Ischigualasto (San Juan province). Coming from Cafayate on the 26th October, we did not reckon on the sad lack of ongoing transport – only buses back to Salta or to Tucuman - across a scary, winding mountain road with sheer drops, oncoming crazy drivers and a bus driver hell bent on chasing a schedule to arrive before the sun goes down and we cannot see the road anymore.

The journey was a nerve-jangling experience to Tucuman, and when we arrived we had to then wait a coupe of hours (at midnight when everything, including the toilets, were closing) for the ongoing bus to La Rioja, the capital of it’s namesake province. After seven hours on the La Rioja bus, we arrived and were immediately let down by our planned couchsurfer (no responses to our messages). We had heard that Villa Union was THE place to see the parks, and so we had to wait for the bus (another 6 hours) and took the 4 hour journey there. We arrived 24 hours after leaving Cafayate and arrived in our hotel after a really long walk (2 km) with all of our bags. The hotel was locked, of course, but luckily, by chance, the owner was there showing some friends around, so he let us in (he had not seen our reservation).

It was at this point that we started to doubt whether we had made a good decision in coming to Villa Union, and to cut a long story short, we hadn’t. You can easily rent a car from La Rioja or even Mendoza/Cordoba and do this region on your own, or take a few tours from San Juan or La Rioja (one park per day). The comfort level would be much better and it would not cost much more, and maybe even cheaper when you factor in the buses we had to take.

Finally, after much stress, we managed to sort out a tour which took in everything we wanted to see in both National Parks, and would not involve us having to rob a bank or steal some jewels to pay for it (we went through our hotel and hired a private driver).

On the 29th October we left with a driver and ‘guide’ (he spoke no English) and drove the hour and a half to Ischigualasto National Park, better known as the Valley of the Moon, or the Land of Dinosaurs.

Setting off in an officially guided caravan of cars, we had five stops to make around the park, where we would get out and the guide would explain things about the park. This park had three different types of rocks – between 180 million (volcanic rocks with clay), 200 million and 230 million years old (red sandstone clay with iron). It was the volcanic activity which gave the valley through the park the name Valley of the Moon from the lifeless grey ash landscapes. All of these rocks were formed and were on the surface during the Triassic era – this is what the world looked like to the dinosaurs! In fact this region would have been covered by rainforest during the time of the dinosaurs, and would have been an actively volcanic floodplain.

On our first stop in the caravan of cars and buses, we had a spectacular vista across the park, an we were also taken to a large rock and shown some real plant fossils still embedded in the rock! Cool! We would head down into the valley and loop around looking at some of the spectacular rock formations formed by wind and water. This whole area used to be a huge sea and the plant life under the water fossilized within the sedimentary deposits of rocks that were formed. This water eventually seeped downwards when the Andes were formed 60 million years ago, causing erosion when the land raised up with the tectonic South American Plate. Water evaporated, causing turbulence with the winds which has caused some amazing rock formations.

Our second stop  was down in the valley itself, surrounded by eerie grey volcanic rocks. We were lucky enough to see some guanacos run down the hill away from us, and watched them as they crossed the valley, single file.

The Triassic period is the last period in the Mesozoic era, and the area which the park is now in was located on the Western edge of Pangea; the mega-continent which began breaking up 200 million years ago.

The third stop consisted of a little walk which had some interesting rock formations such as The Sphinx. One amazing geological process that only occurs at the park was The Bocces. These are hard rock balls that are formed a bit like oysters around plant debris or bones. The sediment forms through groundwater and binds together like cement around the debris forming calcium carbonate. After millions of years, the surrounding rock is eroded by wind exposing the harder balls (called bocce after the boules game).

The fourth and fifth stops were near the far side of the park, and had two famous formations – The Submarine and The Fungus. The drive back was really close to the red sandstone clay which was colored by iron oxide. Back at the start we had a little walk around the nice museum they have there – lots of fossils, dinosaurs and great explanations (in Spanish).

Two sets of fossils really stood out – one in which three dinosaurs had been in a cave and got stuck in a cave-in, and they died all in a row. Another fossil was a dinosaur stuck in some quicksand and was then attacked and killed by other dinosaurs.

They had a lot of information about how to rebuild the fossils as replica skeletons, and even displayed some of the molds used. My favorite dinosaur here was also one of the oldest – the Eoraptor Lunensis which means ‘dawn plunderer from the valley of the moon’. It is a tiny dinosaur, up to knee height only, but it was very fast and probably an omnivore.

After the museum we got back in the car and zoomed the 87 km to Talampaya National Park to get on the next tour there. Talampaya was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000. It is at 1500 meters above sea level, and is pretty big at 2150 square kilometers. You have to take a guided vehicle into the park from the first entrance closest to Villa Union (there are two different entrances where you see different things). We opted for the bus where you can also sit on top, which is a little more expensive, and we had half hour for lunch before we left and so ate the sandwiches we had packed.

The rocks here are all red iron sandstone, hewn from sinking water and wind erosion. It took half hour to get to the Talampaya canyon where the Rio Talampaya is now pretty dry. Dinosaurs used to live here, but not as many fossils have been found as the Valley of the Moon. Our first stop in the tourist bus was to see some ancient petroglyphs (rock carvings) that were made by the Aguada people who lived there between 500CE and 1000CE (according to pottery found in the area, anyway).

Some of the images carved into the rock were pretty strange and reminded me a little of the von Daniken petroglyphs in Chariot of the Gods. If you look a little closer though, you can see butterflies, leaves, birds and other natural (non-alien) objects and animals.

Our next stop was at the little botanic garden they have grown (still near to the entrance to the canyon). The garden has trees and shrubs from the region growing here among the wooden walkways that we walked around. We came to a large indent in the cliff face (up to 150 meters high) which was formed by water millions of years ago. The guide got us all to stand in front of it and after 1,2,3 SHOUT! The echo reverberated around the canyon three times! It was amazing – wish we got it caught on camera. The number of echoes is affected by the wind and temperature – apparently when it is colder, you hear more echoes!

When we got back to the bus we saw a new animal neither of us had seen before – a mara! Maras are the fourth largest rodent in the world and they look like rabbits with long legs. There were two of them drinking the water from the river. They looked so cool and were not scared at all.

Turning around after snapping some photos of the maras we saw a table of food and snacks and Malbec wine! Real tasty, and a nice way to continue our tour.

Continuing, we saw the results of some huge rockslides. Boulders the size of buses or even bigger. Our final stop of the day was to see some other cool rock formations like The Condor, The Bottle and The Monk.

Some of the cracks through the side of the canyon were so huge it really makes you realize how small we are compared to the power of nature. With Andean Condors flying overhead (so huge!), and a nice breeze blowing through the canyon this was my favorite part of the tours (Francesca’s favorite was the Moon Valley landscapes).

We got a surprise at the end of the tour in the car park of Talampaya when a cute culpeo, or zorro, appeared (an Andean fox wild dog that looks like a reddish brown red fox, complete with bushy tail). I managed to get real close to it because it was trying to cool down in the shade, and so got some nice photos of it.

We got back and slept, and the next day (30th October) our hotel owner let us have a late check out until our bus went. During our time in Villa Union I managed to fit in two other walks to local areas – the reservoir and the neighboring town of Banda Florida. At the reservoir I got a bit lost but managed to see it finally after walking about 2 km into the desert. I heard there were some petroglyphs at Banda Florida but it was 12 km from Villa Union. I was going to borrow a bike to do the last 5 km but decided I was hungry and went back without ever seeing them. Banda Florida was a nice walk though, and one part of the walk was well away from the town past some mounds of rock, and there I found some big paw prints and a dead Andean fox. Once I saw those I went back, packed and we left the town to go to Cordoba for Halloween.