Leaving the tourist track

Today we went off the tourist track - really off the tourist track! Anna had researched an area rich in dinosaur fossils. It is in the province of Neuquen which is at the top of Patagonia and the town we flew into is the capital, Neuquen. The main issue was that no one we spoke to in Buenos Aries seemed to know if the various dinosaur parks actually exisited, which means we were flying into a city we knew nothing about, to do something which might not exist. Also we had enormous trouble finding any information on places to stay so we had nothing pre-booked or even researched.

We got up really early to get to the airport in time and had a much less stressful time than our last flight.

We arrived at a tiny little airport, very obviously the only foreigners. We managed to find a taxi and get ourselves to the tourist office. At that stage we weren't very impressed, the cab was full of mud which ended up on our clothes and the town appeared to be just one giant industrial complex. But the tourist office was really helpful and directed us to a local tour agent who could organise tours of the parks - yes, they do exist.

Amy stayed with our packs and Anna and I headed off through the mud and traffic down to the tour operator. He was absolutely lovely. For a total of 530 pesos for all of us, he took us on a tour this afternoon and is taking us on another one tomorrow. He also gave us lots of tips on where to stay, so armed with this new knowledge we headed off to pick up Amy and find a place to stay.

We made it to the recommended place, Hosteria Belgrano and it is so cute. We booked in completely in Spanish, then managed to go and book bus tickets for tomorrow night to Mendoza - also completely in Spanish!!!

Totally chuffed with ourselves we got lunch - really good home made burgers before our guide - Jorge - arrived. He took us out to an area south of the city, Villa El Chocon, where they have a dinosour museum, Museo Palenontologico Ernesto Bachmann. On the way we got to see a huge lake they created in the late 60's by daming a river to create hydro power.

The museum was fab, some great fossils and several really excellent reproductions of the massive dinosours found in this area including the worlds largest carnivours dinasour - much bigger than t-rex. We had a really nice guide in the museum, she did her best to explain everything in english, although occassionally would lapse into Spanish when she ran out of words.

From there we went to see some dinosour footprints. They are in the rock by the lake and look exactly like the concrete versions we are all familiar with. They were amazing, to think that millions of years ago a dinosour stood there is mind blowing.

We came back into town and continued to wrestle with the Argentinian postal system. You have no idea how conveluted it is to try to send a package. We still haven't managed but we have managed to get stamps for our postcards.

We headed out again to get some dinner, finding a market and some gorgeous earrings on the way. Now we are waiting for a nice substaintial dinner, in a resturant with wi-fi (none in the hotel). Tomorrow we are touring the other two dinosour parks before catching an overnight bus to Mendoza.

We are very much the oddity here, they obviously don't get many tourists here but it is a fantastic experience. With a celebratory cocktail in hand, we are having a great time here.