Capilla del Monte

I went to Capilla del Monte expecting to find kitsch, and I found it, but I also found something more genuinely strange underneath it — a town that has built an entire identity around unexplained lights in the sky and seems, at the individual level, to actually believe it. Shop windows sell alien key chains and crystal pendants next to hardware and empanadas with no apparent irony. A statue of an extraterrestrial stands near the entrance to town. Lia found the whole thing delightful in a way I initially resisted and eventually surrendered to.

Cerro Uritorco and the 1986 Sighting

The town’s mystic reputation traces to a specific event: in January 1986, a local resident named Maria Gimenez reported an intense close encounter on the slopes of Cerro Uritorco, the granite peak that dominates the skyline above town. Whatever actually happened, the story caught on nationally, and Capilla del Monte has spent the decades since leaning into it — UFO conventions, alternative-therapy retreats, and a steady trickle of visitors who come specifically hoping to see something unexplained in the sky.

We stayed at a small posada run by a woman who told us, over breakfast and entirely matter-of-factly, about lights she’d seen from her own terrace two years earlier. She wasn’t selling anything. She just believed it, calmly, the way someone describes weather.

Beyond the Mystique

Strip away the UFO branding and Capilla del Monte is also just a good base for hiking — the trail up Uritorco itself is one of the more popular sierra ascents in the province, though we opted for the gentler walk to Cascada Los Chorrillos instead, a waterfall reached through eucalyptus forest that had nothing supernatural about it beyond being unreasonably pretty in the late afternoon light.

Whether or not you buy any of the mystic tourism, the town itself — plaza, river, sierra views — works on its own merits. The alien souvenirs are just a bonus, or a distraction, depending on your mood.

When to go: March through May and September through November for hiking Uritorco in comfortable temperatures. The UFO conference and related events tend to cluster around the anniversary of the 1986 sighting in January.