Lunar Escapes
Trip Start
Jan 03, 2007
1
12
30
Trip End
Apr 05, 2007
St Augustin - Valle de Fertile,
Argentina
Sunday, February 4, 2007
We are in a wee oasis village called San Augustin in the Valle de Fertil (Fertile Valley) .... by oasis do not think of lush verdancy ... but a one-horse dorp that has trees in an otherwise dessicate environment!
Louise has managed to track down an internet place and battling with a key board whose letters have been worn off and stick...albeit for this place, it is a find indeed! Jules and S are heading shortly to bed as we have to catch a bus to La Rioja at the ungodly hour of 3.00am (the bus only comes through three times a week!!!) We did not get much sleep last night (...in fact none at all) as the hostelīs inmates are mainly Argentinian and these guys know how to PARTY! It is considered social suicide if you even entertain the idea of eating before 11am, lest climbing into bed before midnight!
01-Cactus at dawn
! This social arrangement is rather well suited to our aunt in-tow, who regularly works (or fafs) till wee hours of dawn on regular occassion at home, but for the saucy sisters, it requires a fair degree of dedication (..or distraction :-) ) to see our lunar/ solar eclipses.We decided rather than do another long trip through the night that we should go through the backwaters and see something of this unique part of the country! A good decision indeed as this place is quite unique! With an early start we climbed a mountain overlooking the UNESCO world heritage site of Valle del Luna... the park being founded two years after Armstrongīs first historic step for mankind ... with its mars-like red mountain ridges, martian green and yellow mineral belts, and a white moon like stretch of gullies and dongas spanning 50 kms in breadth. It is in this terrain that the earliest known prehistoric creature was found ... Eoraptor Lunesis estimated at 230 million years ... and the later Herrosaurus. It is a gold mine of fossils, which were unearthed (so to speak) when the Andes ridge was formed 65 million years ago. But the scenery is powerful and stark with strange shapes carved out of the white clay. There are river beds that have flash floods that last for 5 to seven hours once a year!! And yet the Amagorolla (not too sure about the name!!) tree actually grows, feeding all life around it by reaching 20 metres into the ground for nutrients and water! Summer day temperatures can reach 48 max 50 degrees and in winter at night it is minus 10 - 15 degrees and 20 in the day! Up the mountain were cactii and other scrub plants that feed off the dew.
In our early morning trek a family of 3 condors circled high above us! We have taken some great landscape shots ... which we are waiting for a fast enough internet connection to upload...most probably in Salta before launching into Bolivia!
Hasta Luego
