La Rioja, Argentina

Early start today. I manage to sell my bus ticket to a guy who is going with the girls, bonus money! I eat another sweet breakfast, washed down with coffee before our pickup at 7am. The first park is Ischigualasto park which is famous for its dinosaur skeletons of the Jurassic period 4.6million years ago. This park is also called ‘Valley of the moon’ due to its surface structure. We arrive in time to join the first convoy into the park (you have to be escorted by a guide) and drive down into the valley. The landscape is very cool with lots of different mineral deposits causing stripy rounded domes across the park. We stop at several places on our 2 hour excursion, getting great panoramas of the valley as well as seeing unique rock structures. The ‘mushroom’ is probably the most famous but I also liked a section that was like a bowling area with perfect rock spheres sat waiting for play. We went to the museum to learn a little about the dinosaur finds before racing out of the park to make good time to Talampaya NP. Talampaya NP is only about an hour down the road but the landscape is totally different. We book onto a tour for this park and spot the girls waiting for a hiking tour. They arrived okay but missed the tour they wanted to do, so they decided to wait for the next one….four hours later! In this 30degree heat I think they are crazy and am pleased I wasn’t sat waiting with them, hope it is worth it. We join our minibus and are taken into the main area where huge red stone cliffs suddenly raise up. This was caused by tectonic plate movement at the same point in time as the Andes range was created around 250 million years ago. First stop was in front of towering red cliffs, where we were shown several Petroglyphs from 500bc. The next was a canyon over 150metres high, with it seems like cored chimneys. We shout and you can hear three echoes off it. The tour stops another 3 times allowing us to see huge structures and those that have formed familiar objects through natural erosion and wind. It is beautiful, showing off different redness according to age. The tour is over too quickly and we drive back to the start. We now have a long drive back, taking over 2 hours of which I sleep for at least half of it. We arrive at the hostel by 6pm which I think is pretty good time. I enjoy a long cold beer whilst I quickly pack and make tuna pasta. We spend the evening chatting about next adventures and wondering what time the girls will be back. They made it home but not before I went to bed at 11pm, so relieved I took the tour!