Cerro de la Gloria

One weekend morning we decided to explore Parque San Martin and climb Cerro de la Gloria within the park. It was a longish walk over to the park, but pleasant and the park greeted us with its massive gates crowned with a condor (see photo). We walked through the park, sticking to the shady areas as the day was already warm. The park is crisscrossed with irrigation channels and obviously someone keeps track of what areas have and haven't gotten water. After a few wrong turns and a pass through the aboriginal garden (see photo of huge cactus and flowering stalk of a yucca and photo of aboriginal with formal non-indigenous plantings) we eventually made it to the base of Cerro Gloria, a tall hill at the far end of the park. The zoo is at the base, but we didn't go through the zoo this visit. We stopped for a bottle of water and a foot-long hot dog though before starting the climb. A relatively new path zig-zags up the hill through partially native vegetation until it reaches the top where eucalyptus trees shade a small parking area. Cerro de la Gloria is named for the impressive statue at the top of celebrating the Army of the Andes, a cooperative venture between Chile and Argentina (see another condor sculpture photo).