By Elena Prichard from Carleton College
In between our woodpecker surveys in the Jeinimeni sector and volunteer work in the Furioso sector of Patagonia National Park, we drove across the border into Argentina in order to renew our Chilean visas and to drive to see ‘La Cueva de los Manos’, 9,000-year-old cave paintings that have been perfectly preserved in the Patagonian Pampa.
We faced many challenges throughout this driving expedition, as it was one of the most rugged and physically demanding trips in the program. First, we had to cross into Argentina and while it went well on the Chilean side (some people may have lost an important receipt that told the Chilean government when they entered the country, but that’s beside the point) when we crossed into Argentina, I had forgotten to give the guy my passport and he ran out to the van because I had just walked out of the building. I was dragged back into the immigration building and brutally questioned about my smuggling past – it was not one of my finest moments. When we were finally allowed to go into Argentina, I ran out of my beloved oregano flavored lays chips (found only in Chile), and we still had an hour to go until we reached the hostel. It was a hard and grueling day to be sure. We arrived around 2:00 to a small “hostel” that had private bathrooms and no other guests, and everyone was able to take a shower without shower shoes or a pack towel that has been used 87 times already this semester. But some of the showers were a little chilly, again, what a painful day. Then, we learned some hard lessons about Argentinian culture. First, in Argentina the people are very strict with the concept of a siesta during the day, as we walked around town everything was closed and silent, we couldn’t find ice cream or snacks or cookies anywhere, and morale (due to lack of sufficient snacks) was plummeting quickly. Second, no Argentinian eats dinner before eight at night, all the restaurants were silent and closed. We wandered around the small town of Perito Moreno, hungry, in despair, and in desperate need of ice cream and pizza for what felt like hours.
Finally, in a desperate attempt to feed nine students, Claudia walked into an open bar. One man sat at the bar silently, another man was painting the walls and standing on scaffolding, there was a mounted deer head that looked like it was stuffed by a blind child, and every so often, a girl would peek out of the curtain from a window on the second floor. All in all, a very strange place. Claudia asked the woman behind the bar if she was serving food, and she offered us two pizzas (our savior!). This would become the highlight of our trip. Quickly, we made ourselves at home, ravenous for the pizza, which was surprisingly okay. We turned on the jukebox (which had one English song, ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran) and played pool. Finally, at eight we walked back to a restaurant that had turned us away earlier (we were still the first people eating there), and got more pizza. That night we slept in our beds, and everyone said they missed their tents the next day (figures).
The next day we woke up and went on a more serious outing. We drove about two hours to Cueva de los Manos, or the “Cave of Hands,” through the Argentinian desert. The desert was a very flat, dry landscape that dropped into a huge canyon with cliffs almost half a kilometer tall and willows lining the river at the bottom. We all got fabulous helmets with chin straps that did not make us feel like bobbleheads at all, and walked down around two hundred meters and along the cliffside to the paintings. We walked by four groups of paintings; the tour guide said there were many more in the valley, some with feet too, but these four were the best preserved. The hands were just outlines of hands, which had been painted by blowing minerals through a hollow bone fragment to reveal the negative of the hand underneath. Along with the hands, the cliffs were decorated with drawings of guanaco, people, nandu, and other important ceremonial images from the people who lived here nearly 9,000 years ago. The people who made these drawings are unknown, we don’t know what they called themselves, because they moved out of the valley around 1,000 years ago. However, the drawings we saw tell a story of how to hunt guanaco using the landscape. One drawing showed people moving guanaco toward a large crack in the rock, which is believed to be a symbol of the large gorge you can see directly across from this painting. The drawing is thought to be giving instructions to use this gorge as a device for hunting.
This is a very interesting site for Patagonian conservation, especially the conservation of anthropogenic artifacts. It’s a very special case because the cliff side protected the images from degradation from sunlight and rain for 9,000 years and provides so much valuable information about the people that lived in Patagonia. This site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, and tourism increased immediately in the area. However, there was a fair bit of vandalism when the cliffs were completely open to visitors. Now, visitors are required to pay for an appointment and take a guided tour. This is an interesting example of how we conserve important artifacts or even how we manage national monuments and parks. For example, should monuments be exclusive like Cueva de los Manos, and does the fee to come into the park restrict locals from enjoying the artifact like foreigners can? In any case we felt lucky to be able to come to the park as foreigners to appreciate a unique place.
