Perito Moreno - Cave of the Hands

After an 11-hour drive, we finally arrived in the city of Perito Moreno. There were no taxis available, so someone from the bus terminal had to call a taxi for us. The taxi came quickly, but it didn't have a taxi sign and didn't really look like a taxi. When we were dropped off at the hostel, we were shocked to see that Perito Moreno was deserted and not a pretty city at all. To make matters worse, we were told that there was only one tourist office and all their tours were fully booked because a small group had just arrived that day. For a few seconds, my mom regretted extending our stay 😂. However, the staff at the hotel were very friendly and quickly organized an alternative for us. The next morning, a private driver picked us up and took us through a beautiful landscape, making stops for photos and taking us to the Cave of the Hands. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell us much about the landscape and couldn't answer our questions. In the caves, we had a guided tour in Spanish. The paintings date back from 7,000 to 1,000 BC. They are divided into three groups based on style. Group A mainly depicts hunting scenes, with paintings of humans and guanacos. Group B consists of static human figures with small heads, depictions of guanacos, handprints, and various abstract representations such as circles, spirals, rows of dots, snake lines, and rectangles. Group C consists of handprints in negative form, where the outline of the hand is represented by overpainting, as well as relatively large human figures.

We were also explained how people lived or survived back then. The different paintings were really interesting. However, they couldn't explain some of them like lines or zigzags.

I always enjoy seeing animals in the wild. We saw two larger chinchillas running along the cliff walls.

On the way back, we wondered why all the fields were fenced off from the road. It seemed unlikely that it was for the protection of the animals from the road, as we often saw guanacos jumping over the fence or animals getting caught on the fence. However, our driver couldn't explain this to us either.

In the afternoon, we had to kill time as our 14-hour overnight bus didn't leave until 23:30. We had already checked out of the hotel and there was no nice café where we could stay longer, so we did some "exercise" at the playground 😂.

Next destination: El Calafate.