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Two hours' drive west of Bajo Caracoles, the seldom-visited area around turquoise
Lago Posadas
and lapis-blue
Lago PueyrredEn
is well worth the detour, but most places of interest around the lakes are accessible only to those with their own vehicle - it's difficult even to hitch due to the lack of traffic. The two lakes are famous for their dramatic colour contrast - most notable in spring - and are separated by the narrowest of strips of land, the arrow-straight
La PenAnsula
, which looks for all the world like an man-made causeway. It was actually formed during a static phase of the last ice age, when an otherwise retreating glacier left an intermediate dump of moraine, now covered by sand dunes, which cut the shallow lagoon of Lago Posadas off from its grander and more tempestuous neighbour. PueyrredEn is the better of the two for fishing - rainbow and brown trout of up to 8kg can be found at the mouth of the RAo Oro.
The area's main village is listed on maps as
HipElito Irigoyen
, but is usually referred to by its old name of
POSADAS
, from the neighbouring lake - though little more than a loosely grouped assemblage of modern houses, its inhabitants are amicable, and keen to promote the region. Two kilometres to the south of town, the low, rounded wedge of
Cerro de los Indios
lies beneath the higher scarp of the valley. Bruce Chatwin's description of this rock in
In Patagonia
is unerring: "a lump of basalt, flecked red and green, smooth as patinated bronze and fracturing in linear slabs. The Indians had chosen the place with an unfaltering eye for the sacred."
Indigenous
rock paintings
, some almost 10,000 years old, are to be found at the foot of the cliff, about two thirds of the way along the rock to the left. The famous depiction of a "unicorn" is rather faded; more impressive are the wonderful concentric circles of a hypnotic labyrinth design. The red splodges high up on the overhangs appear to have been the result of guanaco hunters firing up arrows tipped in pigment-stained fabric, perhaps in a vertical version of darts. However, the site's most remarkable feature is the polished shine on the rocks, which really do possess the patina and texture of antique bronze. There's also no ugly fence screening off the engravings and paintings here as there is at Cueva de las Manos, leaving the site's magical aura uncompromised.
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