Villa Union

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