This is a real adventure over several days.
We get up early in the morning, to get a bus despite the our late arrival at Villa Union last night. We'll inquire at the reception of the park rangers which is in the city center (the park is about sixty kilometers away). The road to go there is cut due to past rain showers. As we need to rest, we find this opportunity good to wait for the next day.
We take the bus at 3pm, despite the rain announced for the next day. The park offers a camping service. They've the best services we have had from a campsite!
The rain wakes us up, it's a bad sign. The canyon has a river in case of heavy rains, it's impossible to visit. We spend the day on the sofas of the reception, to read and play cards (we had not thought to take the computer). This day is long, very long.
We wake up rather confident, it didn't rain at night. We are told that we'll be able to board a minibus at 11:30. Once the little fright of not having enough cash to pay the park past, we take our tickets. The tour is a car tour with stops to explore and discover the most remarkable places on foot. The canyon is beautiful. The cliff is really very high and very red. We can observe some petroglyph (engraving rock art), then a botanical garden. We are then faced with impressive rock formations, a "cathedral" and "totems". We hitchhike to Villa Union, which allows us to gain two hours. But as soon as the city and bikes retrieved, we realize that we have forgotten our gore-tex jackets at the park. A nice ranger will bring them back to our camp in a former municipal
campsite, which is between the tourist office (and its wifi) and a gas
station (the toilets).
The two days of waiting at the park were worth it. We put the Talampaja Canyon in the list of the most beautiful things we have had the chance to see since the beginning of the trip, with Torres del Paine and the Perito Moreno among others.
