walk through it summer can be challenging due to high temperatures of this desert area, but the scorching San Juan sun becomes a traveling companion. However, it should not be underestimated and it is advisable to use sunscreen, cap or hat and bring water for the walk.
It’s a convening place (in 2023 there were more than 150 thousand visitors) and where the increase in Brazilian tourists. The income is for arrival order and the groups leave every one hour approximately. Until mid-March the schedule is 8 to 17 and then the range is shortened 9 to 16.
Ischigualasto is provincial park from 1971 and in the 2000 the UNESCO He named Natural heritage of Humanity and it is largely due to scientific importance more than just for its beauty.
“230 million years ago a group of vertebrates that will mark the evolutionary history of animals in the Land for hundreds of millions of years and are the dinosaursand it is in Ischigualasto Where are the primitive dinosaurs acquaintances best preserved in the world“, the paleontologist and researcher at the UNSJ Institute and Museum of Natural Sciences highlighted to Télam, Ricardo Martinez.
“If we want to know how that group originated and currently surrounds us, because the birds They are descendants of dinosaurs, we necessarily have to study Ischigualasto“said the paleontologist.
“It is striking how they became extinct, but in reality The origin of the dinosaurs is much more enigmaticwhich is what we have been asking ourselves for many years, we have found some answers and we continue working on others,” commented the geologist from San Juan, discoverer of species such as the Eoraptor, Eodromaeus, Panphagia, Sanjuansaurus.
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Ischigualasto Provincial Park
The traditional circuit lasts three hours and consists of a tour of 40 kilometers inside the park that the visitor walks through on his own vehicle (or that of the contracted excursion).
It’s a dirt road, but well maintainedsomewhat winding, but easily passable by any type of vehicle, and in addition, a guide heads the caravan that will stop along five seasons.
The geological uniqueness of the place, product of the movement of the tectonic platesgoes hand in hand with paleontological importance, because this change in terrain that occurred more than 200 million years ago revealed the layers of the triassic period.
Ischigualasto Provincial Park: what is the walk that crosses five stations and lasts three hours?
At the first stop, the “Painted Valley” It welcomes the group with its range of colors, while the guide explains extensively what happened geologically in that area and it becomes clear why it is also known as Valley of the moon.
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Ischigualasto Provincial Park
Then it will be the turn of the bocce court, where there are still some of the perfect circular shapes that emerged from an organic element and that, as a result of the accumulation of sediment, the erosion of water and the wind, took their shape. Nothing in the park is static, new rounded stones emerge and others disintegrate due to thermal amplitude.
At each stop the wooden walkways serve as paths, not only to make the walk more comfortable but to preserve the soil, because the entire area is a potential paleontological site, in fact in the Bocce Court Some of the most notable fossil remains have been found, such as those of the Sanjuansaurus Gordilloi.
Then, back to the cars, and heading towards the “Submarine”, a formation so called because it precisely looked like one of those ships, but which was abruptly modified in 2015 by a landslide that generated an earthquake. A few meters from the original, there is a formation that also looks like a submarine and that was marked “in honor of the victims of the ARA San Juan”.
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Ischigualasto Provincial Park
Halfway through the tour, tourists are guided to the William Sill Site Museuman oasis in the middle of the road, because in addition to beginning to tell the story of the vertebrate fossils found here, there is a cafeteria and toilets.
The place is a construction erected where some of the oldest fossils found were found, such as those of the Ischigualastiawhich are on view as part of an installation that explains the work of paleontologists.
Finally, the caravan reaches The mushroomthe most photographed and representative geoform of the park, where visitors do not stop posing with the rocky figure behind, while the guide explains that they know that in the not too distant future, the figure could change as happened with the Submarine.
In the background are the “The red ravines” a huge reddish wall more than 125 meters high, which is the natural limit with Talampaya and The Rioja and that accompanies the last journey within the “traditional circuit”.
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Ischigualasto Provincial Park
As soon as the wall is left behind, there is a path that is not marked and that leads to what in a few years will become one – if not the greatest – attraction: ‘The bed of bones’a large site found in 2018 by the expedition commanded by Martinez and the geologist Oscar Alcober.
The discovery was released in 2021 and is under study because it contains hundreds of fossils of different species. “It will really be interesting for the visitor because they are so striking and visible. “There are hundreds and hundreds of bones,” she revealed.
Back in the services area, wait for the visit to the Interpretation Center of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the UNSJ which has reproductions of the area’s dinosaurs and real fossils.
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Ischigualasto Provincial Park
The park can also be visit at night four times a week, “Circuit with a full moon”, and also. There are other guided hiking circuits, such as “Hike to Cerro Morado”he “Río Salado Circuit” and trekking “Peña Canyon”and you can also travel the 12 km of the Mountain Bike Circuitwith a local guide, on the park’s bicycles.
By Violeta Marcovich.-
Source: Ambito
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