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Parque de la luna
P´raps you can guess how it got the name...Next stop after San Juan was a night in a tiny town called San Agustin de la Valle Fertil where we headed to access the Parque Provincial Ischigualasto (also known as the Valley of the Moon). The Park is known for its weird and wonderful (moonlike) rock formations, bleak (moonlike) appearance, (moonlike) lack of vegetation - not much except for a few crazy prickly desert plants, and especially the profusion of Triassic era fossils... from ferns to the two oldest dinosaur bones ever found. It´s noticable that rocks in Latin America can never look just like rocks. From caves to lunar parks, there are rocks that "look" like worms, mushrooms, Che Guevara on a micro-scooter, a horse in a hat, boobs, etc etc. To us they´re rocks, but if they don´t have a name, the tourists won´t be interested.
The landscape was incredible and we wish we had done some better planning and taken a bit of extra time to hike or bike round the park rather than doing the standard 3 hour 4x4 trek that most agencies sell. However, seeing as I'm unlikely to ever get to walk on the actual moon it was definitely worth a visit!
It was also interesting to visit small town Argentina as most of the places we have been have been either big bustling cities or towns with a high tourist population. In San Agustin at siesta time (midday till four thirty) you would be forgiven for thinking the town was abandoned. Not a person to be seen on the streets, all the shops and cafes shut down, and even the stray dogs hide! This is not a great time to be desperately searching food before getting on a bus for a solid day, with no hope of anything to eat on board that isn´t stuffed with ham or dulce de leche.
We have just arrived in Salta in the far north of Argentina where the temperature is around 25 degrees C despite it being midwinter...lovely! It took us 24 hours on two buses to get here, but I managed to win my second bottle of bingo wine of the trip on the bus journey...woo hoo!
Hope you are all well, let us know what you've been up to.
Love Nat xxx
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