The Fertile Valley in a Desert

We left Cafayate, having a vague plan of heading south towards Mendoza. We had a list of places we might want to stop at to break up the journey, but none sounded that appealing. Instead, we decided to try and make it all the way down to San Juan, just 2 hours north of Mendoza. Importantly, it's a decent base to make a trip to Ischigualasto Provincial Park, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The 'Submarine' - one of the famous rock formations in Ischigualasto

After our 5 hour bus journey from Cafayate to Tucumán, we bought our tickets for the next leg - 11 hours overnight to San Juan. Despite buying the tickets from a company called AndesMar with plenty of time to spare, we still nearly missed it. We stood at the terminal, staring at a lone FlechaBus, thinking that our bus had been delayed. Luckily, I went to find out if anybody knew where our bus was and was told that it was the one that had been sitting there all that time. We should probably have realised that the FlechaBus at the same time, going to the same place and at the same price was ours!

The 'Sphinx' in Ischigualasto

We'd heard about Argentinian buses serving wine with dinner, but hadn't experienced it until now, so had begun to think it was a bit of a myth. We can now confirm that this actually happens! We were served a meal as good if not better than in most restaurants here, with proper metal cutlery and drinks options including red and white wine. The journey was quite comfortable, with large seats that reclined almost horizontally.  But however comfortable a night bus is, we still find that they leave us needing to catch up on sleep the next day. We hadn't booked anywhere to stay and, after looking at a couple of abominable hostels, found a hotel to check in to. Annoyingly, they wouldn't match a price on our favoured hotel-booking website, so we used their wifi while in reception to make a reservation before checking in. This didn't seem the most sensible business decision, as they would now be paying 10%+ commission to the website.

A field of balls in Ischigualasto

San Juan didn't hold much of interest for us, so we soon set off to San Agustín de Valle Fértil. We'd hoped to hire a car, as we knew that it was impossible to get to Ischigualasto park with public transport. Unfortunately, we'd been in San Juan at a weekend and most businesses in Argentina don't open on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Luckily, the incredibly helpful owners of the place we were staying in San Agustín helped us to organise a reasonably priced taxi to take us there.

The lake in San Agustín

The park was worth the effort. The main sights are quite spread out, so the standard thing to do is to drive around in a convoy following a guide, then stop at several points to appreciate the landscape from closer up. The park is home to the oldest dinosaur fossils that we have yet discovered, from the Triassic Period around 250 million years ago. The desert-like landscape is sculpted by rain and wind, creating incredible shapes in the layered rocks. Palaeontologists don't need to dig here - they just wait for a rain shower and see what's been uncovered by the erosion.

Layers of rock, just waiting to be eroded to reveal the next dinosaur

After Ischigualasto, we were driven back to San Juan by our hosts, from where we took a bus down to Mendoza. We should be meeting our friends Ralph and Shehnaaz there to explore the famous wine growing region together.