Category: Argentina

Argentina’s second center for quality wine production, Cafayate is a popular tourist destination but still has a tranquil small-town feel. It’s easily reached from Salta via the spectacular Quebrada de Cafayate, and is also the southern terminus of the Valles Calchaquíes route. With a selection of excellent accommodations for every budget, and several wineries to visit in and around town, Cafayate invites laying up for a while to explore the surrounding area. It also has many young artists and craftspeople, so check out the artesanía.

It’s an old guidebook cliché, but Córdoba really is a fascinating mix of old and new. Where else will you find DJs spinning electro-tango in crowded student bars next to 17th century Jesuit ruins?

Jujuy province’s eastern portion is Las Yungas, a humid and fertile subtropical zone mostly devoted to the sugarcane industry. Here, arid, treeless altiplano gives way to the dense cloud forest of the Serranía de Calilegua, whose preservation is the goal of this accessible 760-sq-km park. At the park’s highest elevations, about 3600m, verdant Cerro Hermoso reaches above the forest for boundless views of Chaco to the east. Birdlife is abundant and colorful, but the tracks of rare mammals, such as pumas, tapirs, and jaguars, are easier to see than the animals themselves.

Hardly a tourist destination, this coal-shipping, oil-refining and wool-raising hub is a busy port with a few merits worth mentioning. Since the reign of the Kirchners, the capital city of their home province has been spruced up and spit-polished – recent prosperity is palpable. Outside of town, visitors can find some of the continent’s best fly-fishing, traditional estancias and amazingly low tides (retreating 14m). Traveler services are good here but most visitors quickly pass through en route to El Calafate, Puerto Natales or Ushuaia.

The Río Sauce winding gently through it, this leafy town fills up on weekends, with families from around the province flocking to its pretty bathing spots and picturesque hills.

This beachside town is looking a little worn out alongside its newer, more upmarket neighbors, but it’s still a hit with the younger crowd, and has a more bohemian feel than the flashier Pinamar.

Slightly seedy but nevertheless authentic, Caleta Olivia earns its living refining oil and processing fish. High winds plague the port, but are preferable to its sporadic dust storms. Located south of Comodoro on costal RN 3, Caleta Olivia is, however, a convenient place to change buses to more inspiring locales, such as the petrified forests, Puerto Deseado or Los Antiguos.

It’s not hard to see why the hippies started flocking to El Bolsón back in the ’70s. It’s a mellow little village for most of the year, nestled in between two mountain ranges. When summer comes, it packs out with Argentine tourists who drop big wads of cash and disappear quietly to whence they came.