South to Río Gallegos

Caleta Olivia

Caleta Olivia lies on the Bahía San Jorge, 74 km south of Comodoro Rivadavia. Founded in 1901, it became the centre for exporting wool from the estanciasof Santa Cruz. It boomed with the discovery of oil in 1944, but has suffered since the petroleum industry was privatized in the 1990s, and is now a rather sad place with heavy unemployment. However, there's a lovely 70 km stretch of pebbly beach, popular with locals for bathing, and lots of fishing nearby. .

Monumento Natural Bosques Petrificados

Extending over 10,000 ha in a bizarre, wind-wracked lunar landscape surrounding the Laguna Grande, this park contains much older petrified trees than the forests further north around Sarmiento. The trunks, mainly of giant araucaria trees, are up to 35 m long and 150 cm in diameter. They were petrified in the Jurassic period 140 million years ago by intense volcanic activity in the Andes cordillera which blew ash over the entire area. It was the silicates in this volcanic ash which petrified the trunks of fallen trees, and created these strange jasper-like hulks, which were only revealed when other organic matter around them was eroded. The place is more eerie than beautiful, but it does exert a strange fascination, especially when you consider that the fossils of marine animals that you see on the site are a mere 40 million years old, belonging to a sea which covered the land long after the trees had turned to stone. There is a small visitor centre and museum, and a well-documented 1-km trail that takes you past the most impressive specimens. You may be very tempted to take away your own personal souvenir: don't. The only way to visit the park, unless you have your own transport is with a tour from either Comodoro Rivadavia, or the more appealing Puerto Deseado.