Sierra de las Quijadas National Park

Sierra de las Quijadas National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Sierra de las Quijadas is a park of red sandstone canyons in the dry north-west of the province of San Luis, in central Argentina, a landscape that Argentines compare, not unreasonably, to a small Grand Canyon, and that remains little known to foreigners because it lies far from the usual routes. The entrance is on national route 147, which runs from the provincial capital, San Luis, to San Juan, about 120 kilometres and an hour and a half north-west of the former, which has an airport with flights from Buenos Aires; Mendoza is some three hours away. Buses between San Luis and San Juan will stop at the turning on request, but it is six kilometres of gravel from there to the visitor area, and nearly everyone comes by hired car or on a day excursion from San Luis, which includes the transport and a guided hike. At the gate an entrance fee is paid and visitors register. At the end of the access road are a car park, a ranger station, a small shop and eating place run by local people, a basic free campsite and the start of all the trails.

Two may be walked freely and alone. The path of the Miradores, about an hour there and back on nearly level ground, leads to two natural balconies on the rim of the great amphitheatre, which is the view that everyone comes for and enough in itself to justify the journey; and a short botanical trail introduces the plants of the scrub. A longer self-guided circuit of two to three hours, named after the guanacos, climbs to further viewpoints. To go down into the canyons, however, a licensed local guide, engaged at the entrance, is compulsory: one guided route of about two hours visits fossil footprints of dinosaurs, and the main one, to the Farallones, four to five hours there and back, follows a dry river bed into the heart of the amphitheatre beneath walls two hundred metres high. Departures for it stop in the early afternoon, and it does not operate in rain or extreme heat.

Visiting Sierra de las Quijadas National Park: what you will see

The park was created in December 1991 and covers about 735 square kilometres of a low range, reaching something over 1,200 metres, together with the plains and dunes to the west as far as the Desaguadero river, a meeting of the dry Chaco woodland with the desert scrub of the Monte. Its centre is the Potrero de la Aguada, a natural amphitheatre of some four thousand hectares, open to the west, which erosion has carved out of soft sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates of early Cretaceous age, about 120 million years old, laid down by rivers and lakes in a rift valley, and stained by iron to every shade of red, orange, ochre and pink; rain, which is rare but violent, has cut the floor into a maze of gullies, ridges, terraces, towers and fluted cliffs. The colours alter through the day and become incandescent in the last hour before sunset, which is the moment to be at the Miradores. The name, the range of the jawbones, is said to refer to a band of rustlers who hid in these ravines in the nineteenth century and left the jawbones of stolen cattle about their camps. The rocks have made the place famous among palaeontologists. In the 1960s and 1970s the Argentine scientist Jose Bonaparte excavated here, from the bed of an ancient lake, hundreds of specimens of a pterosaur, Pterodaustro, a flying reptile with a wingspan of up to two and a half metres and a long, upcurved lower jaw lined with about a thousand fine, bristle-like teeth, with which it sieved small creatures from the water as a flamingo does;

eggs and embryos have been found, a very rare thing, along with the tracks of dinosaurs, fossil fish, plants and the remains of other animals of that vanished wetland. Near the entrance archaeologists have uncovered clusters of small domed clay ovens, some hundreds of years old, made by the Huarpe people, whose purpose is still discussed. The living desert is sparse but interesting. The vegetation is an open woodland and scrub of white quebracho, mesquite, the creosote-like jarilla, cacti and bromeliads, with a small tree called the chica, leafless, green-stemmed and extremely slow-growing, with wood as hard as iron, which is found only in a few ranges of this part of Argentina. Guanacos are often seen from the trails, with the mara, a long-legged rodent that runs like a small deer, grey foxes, collared peccaries, pumas, the screaming hairy armadillo and, very rarely, the tiny pink fairy armadillo, which burrows in the dunes; condors and black-chested buzzard-eagles soar along the cliffs, peregrines nest on them, and the crowned solitary eagle, a large, grey, endangered raptor of the dry woodlands, is one of the park's emblems.

Sierra de las Quijadas National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily, from about 8 am to 7 pm in summer and 9 am to 6 pm in winter. Autumn, from March to May, and spring, from August to November, are the best seasons, with mild, clear days and cool nights. Summer, from December to February, is very hot, often above 40 degrees, with no shade anywhere on the trails, and the few rains of the year fall then in sudden storms which send flash floods down the dry river beds and close the canyon routes; guided departures are moved to the early morning.

Winter is dry and sunny, with cold nights and frosts. Whatever the season, arrive in time to be at the Miradores for the last light. Carry at least two litres of water each, a hat, sunscreen and closed shoes, and bring food, since supplies at the park are limited and the nearest fuel is far away. Allow a full day. San Luis is an hour and a half away, the hill resorts of Potrero de los Funes and Merlo beyond it, and the Ischigualasto and Talampaya parks a long day to the north.