Moon Valley

The Ischigualasto National Park, located at the argentine province of San Juan, is one of Argentina's most interesting and inspiring attractions.

The uncommon, desert-like landscape featuring impressive rock formations with the strangest shapes, has induced locals to find a very descriptive name (and far more easy than Ischigualasto!) for this wonderful natural setting: they call it The Moon Valley.
It is hard to decide which the main reason to visit this argentine National Park would be. On the one hand, there is the extraordinary beauty of the scenery, with impressive formations such as "the Mushroom", "the Sphinx", "The Worm" or the "The Ball Court" which have been shaped by wind and water erosion over millions of years. The color palette in the landscape is also worth mentioning; a perfect combination of colorless clay, reddish sandstone, and black volcanic ash, offering different shadings at different times of the day (sun position) completes one of the most inspiring sceneries in the world.

However, the argentine Moon Valley is also internationally known for its paleontological value. Some of the most important fossils and dinosaurs skeletons from the Triasic Period have been found here. One of the most published findings was the one of the Eoraptor lunensis, in 1991, which is the most primitive dinosaur known to date (it lived aprox. 235 million of years ago). Some of the fossils found in this region can be seen at the Museum of Natural Sciences, located within the park.

But that's not all! The Ischigualasto National Park, with its impressive geological formations, wonderful colors and vivid testimonies of a time when mankind still didn't exist, is in constant evolution. Due to the continual action of wind and water, many formations collapse and new ones are arise all the time.
So, don't wait any longer, there is always something to discover at the argentine Moon Valley!