Departamento de Coronel Felipe Varela

While Argentina doesn’t feel crowded outside of the major cities, we definitely felt like we were well off the beaten path on our trip to Talampaya National Park – a world heritage site. It was a long drive (>6 hours) mostly up the famous Route 40. Apart from one large town, there was virtually nothing for hours and hours with scarcely a passing car, livestock or anything but wide-open desert. This was also the first place we’ve seen evidence of poverty in the villages we passed.
Talampaya was a beautiful park famous for dinosaur bones, old rocks with stunning red canyons and chimney formations, and petroglyphs. Apart from the dramatic landscape, we also saw some new critters: the mara (looks like a cross between a jackrabbit and a small deer), the suri (similar to a small ostrich), and a road-runner like bird. Cute! Happily, we also saw some more guanacos and condors. Still no puma...Read more