Talampaya

Our small fragile van makes its way through the sands

Early in the morning we loaded the bus, made a pit stop in a small village for water and other such provisions, then set out for the Talampaya, a massive Utah-esque desert landscape with its own sort of Grand Canyon. The park is actually one of Argentina's 3 ‘Patrimonies of Humanity,’ the other two being the Perito Moreno glacier and the waterfalls of the Iguazú, all three of which deserve the title. We walked about 5 km in Talampaya through what would be more or less the opposite of the Grand Canyon. In the grand canyon, you stand on the edge overlooking a massive canyon carved out of the Earth, but in Talampaya, you go walking in-between cliffs just less than 100 meters apart and 140 meters tall that just pop up out of nowhere. It looks like the just fell and landed in the middle of the desert. Unfortunately, a more than daily desert sand storm managed to destroy the camera my family had let me borrow, apparently by sneaking just one grain of sand into the gears that turn to expand the lens. That sucked.

We saw petro glyphs, or cave drawings, that were over 2500 years old and, as our guide told us, inspired by visions induced by the Indians’ habitual consumption of psychedelic cactuses of the region. I guess they were kind of like the Andy Warhol’s of the Stone Age. Thus I found their psychedelic cave art to be significantly more interesting than your common day-to-day cave art.