The first thing you see when you walk in Campo del Cielo Nature Reserve the parking lot is what looks like a large bowl in the ground, about half the size of a football field.

It is a crater formed by a massive meteorite. One of thousands which peppered this entire area about 4,000 years ago.

The reserve was a place for people to see some of the largest meteors in the world. But Argentina has been trying to prevent the theft of space rocks for years.

Right behind it is an interactive museum with hundreds of meteorites on display.

“The experience is magnificent,” said Alexis Saul, who was visiting with his wife and daughter from hours away. “It’s so important to the world. We need to value this place much more than we do.”

Groups of green parrots flew overhead. A short walk around the area reveals a string of giant meteorites, including second and third largest in the world, weighing almost 29 and 31 metric tons respectively. They sit on large circular slabs of concrete and visitors can walk up to them and touch and hug them. It’s quite an incredible experience.

Ayelen Santillán has worked as a lead guide at the park for the past decade. She said there is no place like it on the planet.

“This is unique because even though the largest meteorite is in Africa, you don’t have the ability to get close to these meteorites,” she said.

But theft was a major problem. Santillán said the amount of the theft was impossible to calculate. But it has been happening for decades. And it still happens.

In 2015, The Argentine police thwarted the theft of 3,300 kilograms of space rocks from Campo del Cielo.

In another news report of 2019, a group of people were caught trying to steal three large meteorites. In June, two people were apprehended again in western Argentina trying to make off with 77 stolen space rocks. In 1990, even a US meteorite collector tried to steal El Chacothen, the second largest meteorite in the world.

Meteorites of different sizes were used to scatter the earth.

“They are not so easy to find now,” said an Argentinian researcher in a clip from a 2014 documentary about the Campo del Cielo meteorite field. “But there were plantations, where the whole road was lined on both sides with meteorites. Every rock you found here was a meteorite.”

Argentine state he tried to answer. Since the 1990s, laws have prohibited the removal and sale of meteorites in the country. In 2004, Argentina passed a law declaring meteorites as the nation’s cultural heritage.

Rogelio Daniel Acevedo is a geologist and meteorologist who retired from Argentina’s science and research agency, CONE.

“So they can’t be sold,” he said. “If I find one on my property, I don’t have to turn it in, but I can’t sell it.”

However, he explained, in the markets of the world where precious metals and rocks are sold, there is always an Argentine meteorite for sale.

Whether at a gift shop in the United States or online, a quick search on eBay turned up dozens of listings just for the Campo del Cielo meteorites.

“It’s really unfortunate,” guide Santillán said. “This question of meteorite theft and smuggling is really hard to control.”

She said that while selling Argentina’s meteorites abroad is still illegal under Argentine law, it is difficult to regulate.

Her message: Please do not buy or sell our meteorites. “This is something that belongs to us,” she said. “Something that is unique – (a) world heritage.”

But Santillán said these meteorites are just being used, sold and traded, like everything else nowadays.

And that, she said, is a shame.