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Published: December 19th 2009
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Hi,
From Cordoba, we made our way toward two national parks - Ischigualasto and Talampaya. To get there, we took a night bus from Cordoba to San Juan, and upon arrival to San Juan we learned that we will have to spend there half a day as the only bus to San Augustin will leave at 14:00. So, we turned the bus terminal cafeteria to our "home" for a couple of hours - spending the time on schooling, internet surfing (luckily there was Wi-Fi in the terminal) and some playing. Eventually we made it to San Augustin, we managed to find a nice apartment for the night, and even managed to book transportation to both parks for the next day.
For dinner, we made our first own BBQ!
The next day was dedicated to both parks. First we went to Ischigualasto national park. There are many special rock formations in the park and different parts of the park have distinct colors of the rock, according to the period of time the layer was created. Later, the different layers, spread around the area of the two parks, as a result of tactonic movements that pushed layers that were one above
the other, like in a domino trail.
There were beatiful rock formation, a field with rounded stone balls and an area where many remains of dinosaurs were found. The tour in the park, ended in the park museum, where they present models of the dinosaurs they found in the park and we had some explanations about the different dinosaurs they found in the park, the way restoration and modeling of them is done etc. The importance of this site, is that the oldest dinosaur was found in it, it is dated to be from 280 millions years ago, about 100 millions years before the T-rex.
Next we went to park Talampaya, where we saw more rock formations, and were lucky to see many animals: nando (which is similar to an ostrich), maras (which are similar to a rabbit), grey fox and some birds. We also saw in this park rock paintings which were probably done in the early Inca period and no one knows if they served like road signs telling people from distance where to go, or if they wer used in religious rituals that were made in the area. One of the spots the kids liked most
on that day, was a rock formation called "ciminey" which indeed looks like 3/4 of a huge ciminey. Standing at the bottom of it, one can create an amazing echo - the best I have ever heard.
On the way back from the second park, after dropping off another couple that was with us somewhere where they would catch a bus to their next station, our transportation car broke down! The driver, could not even make contact with the office, as there was no signal for his mobile phone. And so, we ended up in the middle of nowhere, with very little traffic passing on the road. The driver took off by foot to walk to the police station that was ~30 minutes walk away, to try make a phonecall from there. We stayed next to the car, and the kids enjoyed very much playing on the empty road... Eventually, an hour and a half later - two cars came for us, one took us back, and one became a towing car (they just connected a rope between that private car and the transporter...).
We arrived late, to have a very short night sleep until we would wake
The "Chiminey"
The kids are having fun shouting and listening to the best echo I have heard in my life - repeating them 4-6 times... up at 2:30 am, to catch a bus at 3:00 am...
To view all our photos from these parks, you can follow this link: San Agustin gallery Nitzan will write right after me about Mendoza and our stay over there.
Hasta Pronto,
Lilach
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Dror Barlev
non-member comment
Narnia-Land
When we read about your great experiences it looks like a dream on the amazing family that are walking in a "Narnia-Land" for one night (when the clock is stopped for us) but takes a year for them. Instead of fighting the strange features they are surfing the earth through the most interesting cultures and landscapes. Wishing you the best and hope you will have more challanges and nice experiances. We are all waiting to hug you for ever when you return back. Nili and Dror