Patagonia and Altiplano Expedition | #29 – Parque Patagonia Argentina

Before crossing the border to Chile again we wanted to visit one last place in Argentinian Patagonia: the Parque Nacional Patagonia, located next to the Ruta 40 between Bajo Caracoles and the village Perito Moreno.

(Editor’s note: we currently have more than 12 weeks of delay between real life and our blog posts. We were at the Parque Patagonia end of January)

The Parque Patagonia is a relatively new national park. It was founded in 2014 and protects an area of 106,000 ha. We entered the park through the Portal Cañadón Pinturas.

La Posta de los Toldos

About 4 km from the entrance you can find the Refugio La Posta de los Toldos.

It’s a beautiful lodge with a good restaurant open for all guests as long as you reserve a day in advance. Especially the 3-course dinner is relatively cheap for the quality and can be highly recommended

Around the lodge, there are often nandus at very close distance.

At La Posta de los Toldos you can also find the best campground in the national park. There are wind-protected sites for tents, modern clean bathrooms, and a large lounge with a kitchen that can be used by all campers.

The biggest advantage of this campground (and at the same time its biggest disadvantage for some people) is, that it has only 6 campsites. This means it will never be crowded but you definitely have to book in advance. Just contact the lodge, they should be able to help you with the reservation. While we were there we saw a couple of travelers arriving without a reservation hoping to spend the night there and they were all rejected since all 6 sites were already occupied. For us, it was one of the nicest campgrounds in Patagonia and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay there.

There are a couple of very nice hiking trails throughout the park. We did for example the 3 km Los Balcones trail which offers nice views of the nearby canyon.

Cueva de las Manos

But the most famous highlight in the park is the important archeological site Cueva de las Manos. This place can be seen from the Los Balcones trail on the other side of the canyon. To get there you can either walk down in the canyon and then up again on the other site or drive 70 km (one-way) via some interconnected roads directly to the entrance of the caves. We chose the latter option. At the end of the day, we were very glad about our choice because the guided tour at the cave is very interesting but also very long and very exhausting. None of us would have been very happy to have to walk back across the canyon after the tour.

The guided tour took about 2 hours and lots of interesting facts were explained about this site.

Since 1999 the Cueva de las Manos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cave paintings are extremely impressive. Some of them are more than 12,000 years old. It’s an outstanding collection of prehistoric rock art that gives some insight into the culture of the earliest human societies in South America.

Over time the style and motives of the paintings have evolved.

A visit to the Cueva de las Manos is in our opinion a must and should not be missed if you are in Patagonia.

Wildlife

In addition, you can find abundant wildlife in the Parque Patagonia. The Los Balcones trail is the best place to observe the austral vizcacha, a species related to chinchillas (this one was equipped with a tracking device for research purposes).

You can also find many different insects and reptiles in the park.

Whether you like it or not Parque Patagonia is probably the best place to observe one of the most dangerous animals on earth: the black widow spider.

They are everywhere throughout the park and are easy to identify with the distinctive red mark at the rear end of their body.

Since they are extremely small and extremely poisonous at the same time you have to be very careful where you put your hands on the ground.

Nevertheless, we found it quite fascinating to watch these interesting creatures in the wild.

It was the first time we had seen them outside of a zoo.

Cañadón Pinturas and Tierra de Colores

But even if you don’t share our fascination for pre-historic rock art or black widow spiders there is another highlight in the Parque Patagonia that alone would fully justify a visit: the stunning landscapes of the Cañadón Pinturas and Tierra de Colores.

The 5 km long Tierra de Colores trail starts halfway between the Portal Cañadón Pinturas entrance and the Refugio La Posta de los Toldos.

Just before sunset, the landscape glows in extremely intense orange and red colors which offers a perfect contrast to the blue sky.

And even if you have dark storm clouds instead of a blue sky the landscape looks stunningly impressive.

This was our last stop in Argentinian Patagonia. Altogether the Argentinian part of Patagonia has by far exceeded our expectations. We were sure that we would love the South of Chile, but the Argentinian part of Patagonia was a very pleasant surprise and we will for sure return in the future to some of these fascinating places.