Blogs from Villa Pehuenia, Neuquén, Argentina, South America

A holiday within the trip? After Junin we headed further north to Zapala across a more open but empty landscape of vast plateaus between huge crater shaped depressions. It is dinosaur fossil country. From there we turned back west and headed back to the hills to eventually reach Villa Pehuenia. In case you don't know, and why would you, Pehuen is the Mapuche indian word for Araucaria or Monkey Puzzle tree, these grow around here in forests. A bit weird as the older (bigger) ones have bark like an old grey alligator, and they don't really move in the wind. The female trees produce, at this time of year, big pine nuts which are used a lot in the local restaurants. And the nuts taste good too. Villa Pehuenia is a very new village mainly on ... read more