Balcheta

Valcheta lies beside a stream descending from the Somuncurá plateau into the dry plains of northern Patagonia. Warm springs in its headwaters shelter the naked characin, a small fish found nowhere else, and the Valcheta frog. Downstream, the water eventually disappears into Laguna Curicó. In 1798 the cartographer Félix de Azara marked the Balchitas people in this part of Patagonia, a country of Indigenous routes and watering places.