Qualla: Capilla del Monte

Capilla del Monte: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of January 9, 1986, something left a mark on the hills above Capilla del Monte. A dark, scorched oval roughly 120 meters long appeared on the slope of Cerro Pajarillo, as if a vast object had set down and lifted off again. Word raced across Argentina. Within a season, a town that drew a few hundred curious visitors a year was receiving tens of thousands. Many believe the footprint was staged. It hardly mattered. The Huella del Pajarillo changed what Capilla del Monte was, and the small city at the foot of the Sierras Chicas has been leaning into the mystery ever since.

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Capilla del Monte: Four Centuries Before the Saucers

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before anyone looked to the sky, this was simply a chapel on a hill. The story begins in 1585, when Lucía González Jaimes, daughter of a Spanish conqueror, inherited land in the valley; that grant, dated October 30, is taken as the town's founding. Between 1695 and 1719 Capt...

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Capilla del Monte: The Night the Town Changed

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the mid-1980s Capilla del Monte was a modest holiday town. Then came the footprint. After the news spread, the city began drawing a different kind of visitor: people fascinated by UFOs, mysticism, magic, and the esoteric. Where roughly 400 people a year had once climbed nearby...

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Capilla del Monte: The Mountain That Started It All

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cerro Uritorco rises just three kilometers from the center, the highest peak of the Sierras Chicas at 1,949 meters. The climb takes about three hours and passes waterfalls, springs, and shifting bands of vegetation; from the top you can see the town, the El Cajón reservoir, and t...

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Capilla del Monte: More Than Mysticism

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Strip away the saucers and Capilla del Monte is still a town worth wandering. At its heart runs the Calle Techada, a roofed street covered in 1964 for a photography exhibition called Foto Cita 64; the roof was never meant to stay, but it was never removed either, and the shaded a...

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