Journey to the Boundaries of Time

Your transfer meets you on arrival in La Rioja and takes you to the hotel. There is a welcome reception this evening, which is your first chance to meet the people who will be with you for the next few days. Nothing else is planned, and that suits what comes next. Tomorrow is a long day with two national parks in it, so settle in and get some sleep.

Long day, two parks. First comes Ischigualasto, also called Valle de la Luna, which lies in San Juan province. You follow a 3-hour circuit with five stops, and at each one there is a new formation: the Worm, the bocce court, the Submarine, the Mushroom, the red canyons.

Around noon you continue to Talampaya, in La Rioja, for the 2.5-hour canyon circuit between cliffs 150 m (490 ft) high. You see petroglyphs from the region's former inhabitants, and erosion-carved forms like the Wizard King, the Gothic Cathedral, the Tower and the Monk. Together the two parks are one UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the afternoon you transfer to Villa Unión.

The day starts at 8:30 am, and you will want every hour of it. Vinchina and the Diaguita Stars come first, then the geological folds of Quebrada de la Troya, the first of two very different valleys on the climb. The second is the multicolored Quebrada del Peñón. From there you keep going up, onto a high plateau above 4,000 m (13,100 ft).

Laguna Brava sits up there, surrounded by volcanic peaks, inside a reserve declared to protect the vicuñas and the rest of the flora and fauna. In the afternoon you return to your hotel in Villa Unión.

You leave Villa Unión and cross the Famatina range by way of the colorful Cuesta de Miranda, then drop into Chilecito. The stops are Station 1 of the La Mexicana mine cableway, a historical monument, and the mining museum; the Samay Huasi museum of Joaquín V. González; the Santa Florentina winery; and Río del Oro.

Near the end of the trip there is an optional extra: a tasting at a private winery, where the white to try is Torrontés Riojano, La Rioja's own grape. In the afternoon you return to the city of La Rioja by way of Los Colorados.

A transfer takes you to the airport for a connecting flight home or on to the next destination in South America. Since this is a tour extension, the next destination matters: we can design the route to add whatever else you want to see, so it is worth planning that part early.