Ty-Juan-asaurus Rex

Jurassic Park was undoubtedly a classic moment in film from the 1990`s. What could be better than watching a film where an eccentric old scientist brings dinosaurs back from extinction and opens a theme park where the public can come and see them in an elaborate `dino zoo`, only for them to slyly reproduce and break free of their electric fences, devouring the scientist`s colleagues and friends along the way? Well, perhaps seeing real life dinosaur bones and fossils in a huge canyon full of dead dinosaur bodies in the flesh perhaps? This is what we were expecting from our trip to Valle de la Luna (The Valley of the Moon) from San Juan, north of Mendoza.

After reading up on the Ischiguialasto National Park with its hundred of dinosaur fossils and valley of rocks and craters that resemble the moons surface, we were truly excited about visiting the real life Jurassic Park the next day. Tay got so excited she nearly transported herself back to 1993 to pick ùp the Jurassic Park cycling shorts she wore as a child.

The closest we got to a real-life Jurassic Park

However, when we arrived there was no cuddly Richard Attenborough limping along with his little mosquito walking stick, no annoying child actors, no Jeff Goldblum, no big fat guy with glasses getting stung in the eyes with poisonous dinosaur spit.....and there was definately no tour guides who spoke English. The tour turned out to be severely lacking in any sort of dinosaur information and the first fossil everyone was elbowing each other out of the way to catch a glimpse of, was in fact...a leaf. Not a huge T Rex skull, but a teeny tiny little leaf. We realised we had got a bit carried away and accepted that the tour was going to be very `rock` and `sediment` focussed. Well, the tour guide only spoke in Spanish, so we only have it on Robbi`s authority that that`s what was being explained.

A HUGE T-Rex skull (ish)

No dinosaurs aside, the views of the valley were really amazing and it did genuinely look like the surface of the moon. So much so that we felt it neccessary to take a `look at us being astronauts` photo, I think you will agree it is VERY convincing. For all you science fans out there, we thought we should hit you with some facts. Firstly, the park contains fossils from plantlife and mammals from the late Triassic period (roughly 230 million years ago) and according to the internet, is the `only place in the world where nearly all of the Triassic is represented in an undisturbed sequence of rock deposits`. If only we had been able to understand the tour guide we might have been able to give you more information, but unfortunately our Spanish vocabularies still only include counting from 1-100 and various conversational phrases.

Neil Armstrong?

One great thing about having Robbi with us is that he is a complete Teacher`s Pet and on every day trip you will be sure to find him chatting up the tour guide at least once to ask all his little questions. This really pays off because we essentially end up with a mediator who can `dumb down`the real information and make it more manageable for us. This is how we learnt that a patch of perfectly round boulders which looked as though they had been specially arranged into a pattern, were in fact random small pieces of petrified wood and leaves which had then over time accumulated layers of calcium, creating round stones. The main sight to see at the park is the rock which we thought looked a LOT like ET...please see photo for ET likeness.

The round boulders

The museum at the end had a raptor skeleton, so in the end we did get a bit of dinosaur action which was nice. Overall, a really interesting day trip with incredible views.

Ty-Juan-asaurus Rex

San Juan, Argentina