Argentina's Cerro Los Guanacos

From Scott Corrales
Latin American Correspondent

Source: Grupo G.A.B.I.E
Date: 05.16.2011

Argentina’s Cerro Los Guanancos: A High-Strangeness Area

One night, a group of people saw a large ball of fire fall to earth from the heavens. They thought it was an airplane, but no traces of such a vehicle were ever found.

It was the summer of 1970. The time was 8:00 pm and “Gordo” Jiménez and Zito Verón were walking along the hillside with their goats. Suddenly, a large fireball flew overhead and impacted the north face of Cerro Los Guanacos.

Within hours, the area had been seized by soldiers, policemen, nurses and backwoodsmen searching for the fallen “plane”, yet no traces of that strange sighting were ever found.

 Ever since that strange incident, this region of the Department of Salavina is constantly visited by UFO researchers and by curiosity seekers who (still) hope to experience a close encounter with the unknown.

Gastón Zalazar is an aeronautical technician and writer who told EL LIBERAL newspaper that he had his first brush with “the unknown” in 1935.

”One evening we were returning home with my father and when we reached Cerro Los Guanacos, my father realized he’d lost his rebenque, and asked me to go back and find it. I found it, and on my way back, on the highest part, I found myself facing something that left me cold: the sea was only a few meters away from me. It looked so real that I could even make out the waves. I couldn’t scream or say a word. I took off at full gallop to the house of Mr. Juan Mansilla, where I was given some water to drink,” he said.

Stories about Cerro Los Guanacos have been handed down from one generation to another, involving the presence of strange phenomena, sounds and lights that appear in the firmament and keep local residents on their toes, and even researchers who come to the area to spend the night, faced with the likelihood of having a sighting to study.

The location is 17 kilometers from Sumampa, in the El Carabajal wilderness, deep in the Quebrachos Deparment. It is dominated by dense forest and few have had the privilege of reaching its summit, where it is said the firmament can be seen “in a different manner” and where the night offers colored lights and the possibility of seeing strange phenomena.

(Translation (c) 2011, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Grupo G.A.B.I.E and El Liberal www.elliberal.com.ar)