A country 3,700 kilometres long, where the far south is seen in December and the whales and the snow in August
Argentina is chosen not as one country but as several trips: Buenos Aires, the wine around Mendoza, the lakes around Bariloche, the glaciers of the far south and Ushuaia at the end of the road. Each part has its own months, and you fly between them — so two weeks hold Buenos Aires and two more parts, not all of them.
The far south — El Calafate, El Chaltén and Ushuaia — is seen from November to March, when you can walk it. Bariloche has two seasons: summer for the lakes and trails, and winter, June to September, for skiing at Cerro Catedral; Ushuaia has a ski area in winter too, Cerro Castor. Península Valdés is a winter trip, when the whales arrive, and the Vendimia, Mendoza's harvest festival, falls in early March. Buenos Aires is at its most pleasant in spring and autumn, October to December and March to May. The combinations follow: travel in January and you do the south and Bariloche without snow; travel in August and you do Bariloche on skis and Valdés with whales, leaving the glaciers for another trip; March pairs Mendoza with the south before the season ends.
Each place has its own page — what makes it worth the detour, and how long you need.
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The places on this site are linked through Aeroparque, Buenos Aires' city airport: Mendoza and Bariloche are about two hours by air, El Calafate three, Ushuaia three and a half. International flights land at Ezeiza, on the far side of the city, so arriving and flying domestic the same day means crossing between two airports. The south does not route back through Buenos Aires: El Calafate and Ushuaia have a direct flight of an hour and twenty minutes, and Bariloche and El Calafate one of about two and a half hours, so Patagonia is done as a single line. Coaches make sense for short hops such as El Calafate–El Chaltén; Buenos Aires to Bariloche takes about twenty hours.
Ushuaia bills itself as the southernmost city in the world, which holds if you insist on a city. The Chilean settlement of Puerto Williams lies further south but was long treated as a village; Chile declared it a city in 2019, so the argument continues.
Asado is a social event as well: meat over embers, for hours, cooked by one person called the asador whom nobody interrupts. Argentina has spent decades near the top of the world for beef eaten per head.
Tango grew in the port districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo at the end of the nineteenth century, among immigrants, and was long considered vulgar. The salons accepted it only after Paris did.
Buenos Aires restaurants open the kitchen for dinner around eight and fill up after nine, at weekends nearer ten. Arrive early and you get a table without booking — and dine among tourists.
Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires is about 140 metres across, with seven lanes each way plus side streets, and counts among the widest avenues in the world. Crossing on foot takes two or three light cycles, and that is normal.
Patagonia is one of the richest palaeontological grounds on earth. Patagotitan mayorum, among the largest dinosaurs known, was found in Chubut in the early 2010s after a farm worker noticed a bone sticking out of the ground; it was described in 2017.
This isn't a ranking — it's a route. Any one of these could carry a whole trip.
A glacier five kilometres wide, its face some sixty metres above the lake, reached by road and approached on walkways — no boat, no hiking, which makes it the south for people who do not trek. From the paths you hear the ice crack and fall into the water. Long considered stable, it has been thinning and retreating fast since 2019.
A hamlet founded in 1985 so that Argentina would have a settlement on a disputed border, now the country's trekking base. For anyone who comes to walk: Laguna de los Tres, below Fitz Roy, is a full day, about eight hours there and back. It is three hours by coach from El Calafate, so a day trip is mostly the drive — this is a place to sleep.
A hundred-and-fifty-kilometre valley in Jujuy province, with hills in seven colours and villages up to three thousand metres, part of the Inca road and UNESCO-listed since 2003. It is not on the Patagonian line but needs its own flight north, so it suits anyone with three weeks or who has already seen the south. The altitude registers immediately, so plan nothing for day one.
A bay southern right whales come to mate and calve in, from June to December; in July and August mothers with calves come close to shore, so at Puerto Pirámides you see them without a boat. For anyone travelling in winter who wants the part of Patagonia that has a reason to be visited then. The base is Puerto Madryn, which has its own airport.
The same falls, shown differently by each country: Brazil gives you the view, Argentina the proximity — the walkways drop in among the cascades and a small train runs to the Devil's Throat, where you stand over the lip. Like the Quebrada, it is on the way to nowhere: a separate flight north and a full day, soaked regardless of the plan.
Argentina takes its name from the Latin word for silver, though there was never much silver there. The Spanish believed a story about a mountain of silver in the interior that did not exist. The name stayed, the mountain was never found.
Between 1917 and 2019 the ice of the Perito Moreno glacier dammed an arm of Lake Argentino more than twenty times: the water would rise, then burst through the ice bridge with a crack heard for kilometres.
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
Not all of it. Perito Moreno is open all year, only with shorter hours, and Bariloche and Ushuaia have their ski season then. What shuts is El Chaltén: from May to mid-October most lodgings and restaurants close and the trails are under snow. For walking in the south the window is November to March.
Two weeks hold Buenos Aires for three or four days and two parts of five each — the south, say, with El Calafate and El Chaltén, and Bariloche, linked by a direct flight. Three weeks allow a third — Mendoza, Ushuaia or Iguazú. With under ten days, Buenos Aires takes one part alongside it.
For foreign visitors €29; under-sixes are free. Buy the ticket in advance on the national parks site; a second entry within 72 hours costs half — worth knowing if you return to the glacier the next day.
Keep going — these destinations and stories pair well with this one.
The whole of Argentina fits into one query — six questions and you know which of them suits you.
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All photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licence stated beside each one.
