After the eight days with Ilana and Susanne, Susanne headed back to BA for Uni, and Ilana and I took a few days in Salta at a really great hostel to relax, organise laundry and generally chill out. I’m now on my eighth hostel and the last one we stayed at in Salta for those two days is so far my favourite. “Hostel Salta Siempre”. Really friendly staff, great garden courtyard area to relax and on the Wednesday night they had a huge Asado followed by some local folk music. We also met some lovely people there. Ilana was heading north to Bolivia and I was heading south so we parted ways last Thursday. I took a bus at 1.30am and arrived in the forgettable city of San Juan the following evening at 9pm. The next day I had a few hours to kill before taking a four bus to Valle Fertil.

Valle Fertil is a very small town which is primarily the tourist destination for visiting the two national parks in the vicinity Ischigualasto & Talampaya national parks. I checked into a basic but very friendly hostel, in my room was a girl from Quilmes just south of BA. She didn’t speak much English so had the whole weekend practising Spanish which was great. We were best buddies for the weekend, and hopefully when I’m back in BA I’ll meet up with Lorena again.

The parks were pretty awesome and it was nice to get off the gringo trail a bit for a couple of days. Apologies for laziness of below copy & paste and link!

“These two contiguous parks, extending over 275,300 ha in the desert region on the western border of the Sierra Pampeanas of central Argentina, contain the most complete continental fossil record known from the Triassic Period (245-208 million years ago). Six geological formations in the parks contain fossils of a wide range of ancestors of mammals, dinosaurs and plants revealing the evolution of vertebrates and the nature of palaeo-environments in the Triassic Period.”

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/966