I visited the Cueva de las Manos in February 2022. My base for this visit was the uninteresting little town of Perito Moreno (which, it should be remembered, has nothing to do with the famous glacier of the same name). I arrived there in the evening after several hours on the bus from Esquel (an ideal base for visiting Los Alerces). I had booked an excursion via WhatsApp with Chelenco Tours. Our guide was really friendly and the tour was well organized. I can therefore recommend this agency without any problem.

After he picked us up at our hotel, we drove to the Refugio La Posta de Los Toldos in the Parque Nacional Patagonia. We stopped for breakfast and to pick up other travellers. We finally reached the coveted site on the north side of the canyon. Indeed, rather than simply parking at the reception desk of the interpretation center, our excursion involved a hike across the canyon. The scenery is simply magnificent, and I think this addition greatly contributed to my appreciation of the site. Our guide talked us through the flora and fauna we observed on the way down (and back up!). Black widows, to the delight of my arachnophobic friend, were abundant. We also saw our first Andean condors soaring over the canyon.

Once we reached the interpretation center, we waited a while for the scheduled time of our guided tour. Access to the site is only possible with a guide-interpreter. The paintings are located along a rock face beneath outcrops. There are no real caves here, but rather rock shelters. A wooden walkway gives visitors access to the paintings. It's built wide enough in interesting places to give everyone a good view of what the guide is explaining. The paintings are mostly stenciled handprints in shades of white, red, ochre and black, as well as green. There are also numerous representations of animals and natural elements, including guanacos (sometimes pregnant), armadillos and stencils of rhea legs. You can see the river and elements of the adjacent canyon, like a map of the region. It seems that some scenes illustrate hunting scenarios, enabling the young members of this tribe to learn the rudiments of this activity. The paintings potentially acted as a kind of learning material.

After the guided tour, we crossed the canyon in the opposite direction and drove back to the Refugio. A large group of rheas and guanacos were waiting for us! We rounded off the day with a short hike in the aptly named Tierra de Colores, where we saw an armadillo, before the guide took us back to Perito Moreno to catch the evening bus to El Chaltén (base for most of the hikes in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares).

In conclusion, the Cueva de la Manos is the best-preserved and most spectacular rock art site I've visited to date. The colors are vivid, the motifs are clear, the site is well laid out and the guides are competent and interesting. What's more, the scenery is breathtaking and the wildlife, an intrinsic part of the paintings' history, is abundant. I'm of the opinion that this site should be extended to include the adjacent national park and become a mixed site. The vastness of Patagonia is only partially covered by the Valdés Peninsula at the moment on the list and I believe that two sites can represent this ecosystem.