Ischigualasto.

Day 4.

Waking up at Ischigualasto is like waking up in next door to The Flintstones.  (the reference was completely lost on our kids).  We joined the convoy of other tourists for a three hour tour of this rare landscape.

The beauty of this place is that time, wind and rain have sculpted rock formations that resemble many familiar objects.  Fossils are also uncovered on a regular basis and the first stop in the tour is the see a plant fossil in situ.  It is very humbling to look at the remains of a plant that grew millions of years ago and realise that the human race is only a dot when looking at the history of the world.

Cancha de bochas (lawn bowls) is a natural phenomenon where almost perfectly formed spheres are slowly exposed.  As the park rangers find these balls they place them together.  No one actually knows exactly how they are made.  The guide asked everyone to be quiet for a moment to listen to the earth.   It’s not often that we experience complete silence in our lives.

The best way to visit Ischigualasto is with your own vehicle and this is the reason we hired the camper from holidayrent.cl .  It gave us accommodation and freedom to see central Argentina.  While heading back towards San Agustin we saw this little stream and pulled over for a play and an early dinner, something you can’t do when you’re on a bus.

We made it back to Caucete after nightfall.  This is the town we stayed in on the way out to Ischigualasto.  This time though we didn’t park under a tree or as close to the highway as last time.  We found a nice quiet corner near a brick wall in a service station car park and slept comfortably until the early hours of the morning when a freight train went through town and honked its horn at all 16 intersections.