After all our hiking in Patagonia we thought we should take a break and enjoy the wine region of Mendoza and check out the moonscapes and rock formations in the area nearby.
Mendoza
Mendoza produces most of Argentina’s wine, and Malbec is the most popular variety. It was actually surprisingly hard to find a wine bar where you could just do tastings. So we had to go to a fancy restaurant and on a winery tour to finally sample some good wines.
The interesting thing is that up until the 90’s pretty much all Argentinian wine was low grade rubbish that couldn’t be exported. But then Argentina became richer and people started buying better quality imported wine. So all the wineries started going broke and the only ones that survived were the ones that worked out how to make good wine. And now, Argentina makes good quality wine that attracts plenty of tourists. They’re so obsessed with wine in Mendoza that they put it in everything. Including their ice cream. It’s actually really tasty. They had Shiraz + coconut, rosé + raspberry, straight Malbec, plus a few more which I can’t remember now.
Atuel Canyon
South of Mendoza you have the Atuel Canyon which is a dry landscape with interesting rock formations.
After our relaxation we headed north to San Agustin to see more rock formations and moonscapes. It’s a bit out of the way, there’s only one bus company that goes there and the villages we passed on the way only had 10 buildings in them. Following on from our bus luck on Route 40, our bus broke down and could only go at 10km/h. At one point there was a tiny 5 metre tall hill and the bus almost stalled and rolled backwards. Luckily the rest of the route was flat! But we eventually got to San Agustin, just a few hours late. This seems to be a recurring theme in South America.
Ichigualasto
This park has a big variety of different moonscapes and coloured rock formations. First up you have the Painted Valley with its layers of colourful sediments. Because these aren’t actually rocks (just colourful compressed dirt), every time it rains it erodes away part of the formations and leaves them with big cracks running down their sides.
A bit further on you get to the Ball Field which is pretty strange. It has all these perfectly round balls of rock sitting on top of a small sandy hill. They formed underground, where little chunks of minerals grew layer by layer until they had formed these rocky balls. Then the sandy hill eroded away and the balls ended up on the surface.
Nearby you have some formations that have a layer of rock on the surface, but compressed dirt underneath. So these ones were sculpted by the wind and you end up with some interesting formations like the ones below. Moonscapes is definitely a good description for them here.
The Mushroom is the iconic formation in the park, along with the red Las Coloradas cliffs that form the border of the park.
Talampaya
The next day we went to see what was on the other side of the Coloradas cliffs, Talampaya Park. The landscape here is a bit different. You have a big canyon of reddish-pink cliffs that look like they’ve had big columns cut out of them because of all the semi-circular “chimneys” along the cliffs.
There is one chimney that is perfectly formed for echoes. We were in a group of about 15 people and we all shouted the same word at the chimney. The noise then reflected out of the chimney, to the opposite wall of the canyon and back again (in about 4 seconds). And when it came back you could hear every person’s individual voice. It didn’t sound like a wall of noise, every voice was perfectly clear. And the echoes bounced back and forth another 3 times before they finally became too quiet. So we had a bit of fun yelling at a cliff like small children for a while.
So far it seems like if you want cool rock formations and moonscapes, then the western part of Argentina is where you can find them. All the cool scenery in Patagonia is in the west as well. Eventually we’ll head up to the north western part of Argentina and then we’ll see how it looks up there too.
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