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Argentina Tours & Travel | Talampaya National Park

Talampaya National Park consists of 530,000 acres in the central western part of Rioja Province. Formerly a provincial park, it was upgraded to a national park in 1997 to preserve the area’s important paleontological and archeological sites. The park's terrain includes dry forests, savannah and pastures, low hills and high canyon walls. Visitors on Argentina tours are attracted by the stark beauty of the unique landscape where erosion and wind have chiseled oddly shaped columns, providing a nesting habitat for the Andean condor. Other wildlife includes the grey fox, armadillo and the chinchilla-like vizcacha plus such bird species as the Patagonian mocking bird, black-chested buzzard eagle and the peregrine falcon. Our twelve-day Hidden North of Argentina tour visits the park.

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The park contains an extensive fossil record of the evolution of vertebrates and environments during the Triassic Period. Evidence shows that the Lagosuchtalampayensis, one of the first dinosaurs, roamed the area 250 million years ago, and the Palaeocheris talampayensis forty million years later. Talampaya Canyon is also of archeological interest to visitors on Argentina tours. One of the park’s main attractions is the Lost City (La Ciudad Perdido) which requires special permission to visit when you travel to Argentina. The region was inhabited by cave dwellers as early as 640 BC to 118 AD, and the park contains some of the most important pictograms and petroglyphs in Argentina.; The park may be visited year-round by travelers on Argentina tours, though its dry windy climate is extreme in both summer and winter with summer highs reaching 122F and winter lows down to 15F. There is frost from May to October.; Also worth visiting when you travel to Argentina is nearby Ischigualasto Provincial Park. Located in San Juan Province, the park contains an odd assortment of rock formations and is known as the Valley of the Moon (Valle de la Luna). The areas together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.; The park may be explored by car, on foot or bicycle but by guided tour only. It is too new to have visitor services for those on Argentina tours, though it does have an information center, toilets and a bar. The closest city is Pagancillo.
For more information about visiting Talampaya National Park on Argentina tours, email talampaya@apn.gov.ar

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