With a prestigious perch over beautiful Plaza Independencia, the Park Hyatt Mendoza offers modern amenities behind its restored 19th-century façade. Its Bar Uvas is a popular meeting point, and its first-rate restaurant, Bistro M, offers elegant Mendozan food with a French accent. Isolation, tranquility, and a view of nothing but mountains and vineyards are the lures at Cavas Wine Lodge, 40 minutes outside of town. Each of the 14 adobe-style villas has a private pool, and there’s a spa with treatments that include a Malbec-seed scrub.
To truly experience wine country, head two hours from Mendoza to San Rafael and the historic Finca Los Alamos, a working cattle ranch and viticulture enterprise dating back to 1830. The sprawling white adobe main house was once a retreat for Argentina’s literary luminary Jorge Luis Borges.
Dining is unforgettable at Argentine star chef Francis Mallmann’s 1884 Restaurant in nearby Godoy Cruz. Located in the manor house of the historic Bodega Escorihuela, the sumptuous restaurant features grilled steak, the perfect partner for the local Malbec. Learn about wine in town at the tasting room Vines of Mendoza, which offers samples of more than 90 wines from this region that locals call La Tierra de Sol y Buen Vino, “the Land of Sun and Good Wine.”
WHERE: 600 miles/965 km southwest of Buenos Aires. PARK HYATT MENDOZA: Tel 54/261-441-1234; www.mendoza.park.hyatt.com. Cost: from $210; dinner $50. CAVAS WINE LODGE: Tel 54/261-410-6927; www.cavaswinelodge.com. Cost: from $325 (off-peak), from $560 (peak). FINCA LOS ALAMOS: Tel 54/2627-442-350; www.fincalosalamos.com. Cost: from $250, inclusive. When: closed May–Sep. 1884 RESTAURANTE: Tel 54/261-424-2698; www.1884restaurante.com.ar. Cost: dinner $75. VINES OF MENDOZA: Tel 54/261-438-1031; www.vinesofmendoza.com. BEST TIMES: Feb–Apr and Oct–Dec for nicest weather; late Feb—Mar for the Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia (harvest festival).
Spellbinding Land of Mountains, Rock, and Ice
GLACIERS NATIONAL PARK
Patagonia, Argentina
Characterized by a barren but beautiful landscape that is pocked by 50 major glaciers and more than 200 lesser ones, Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (Glaciers National Park) seems like another planet. While most glaciers are receding, Perito Moreno—the park’s centerpiece, and four times the size of Manhattan—is still growing; its imposing 3-mile-wide wall of ice rises 200 feet above Lake Argentino. You can watch in awe from viewing platforms as icebergs grumble, crack, and calve off the face to plunge into the lake, or you can strap on crampons and walk a surface wrinkled by icy blue crevices and crossed by snowmelt rivers. Mount Fitz Roy looms more than 11,000 feet over Lake Viedma, which anchors the north end of the park. Argentines call it Cerro Chaltén, a mix of Spanish and Tehuelche for “Smoking Mountain,” which refers to the cloud ring around its sheer, granite summit. Rising just across the border in Chile and at times visible from the park are the magnificent Torres del Paine peaks (see p. 1023).
Los Glaciares exemplifies Patagonia, among the world’s most sparsely populated areas. Santa Cruz Province, where the park lies, is almost as big as Texas but has a population of only 160,000. But you needn’t explore the End of the World under the same harsh conditions that Darwin endured when he visited in the 1830s. The handsome Hostería Alta Vista offers luxury and is 20 miles from El Calafate, the rapidly expanding and relatively charmless gateway to the area. This 155,000-acre working sheep farm, dating to 1910, now offers a seven-room antiques-filled inn, along with stables of horses that let guests explore their inner gaucho. The only hotel within the park, almost touching Perito Moreno, is Los Notros. From every room, you can see—and sometimes hear—the glacier. Or try the luxurious 17-room Eolo, which was built in the style of an old Patagonian estancia in the empty windswept Anita Valley. A 7,400-acre property, it sits an hour outside El Calafate at the foot of a starkly beautiful mountain.
Unlike most Patagonian glaciers, which are receding due to global warming, Perito Moreno is growing.
WHERE: El Calafate is 1,690 miles/2,720 km southwest of Buenos Aires. HOSTERÍA ALTA VISTA: Tel 54/2902-499-902; www.hosteriaaltavista.com.ar. Cost: from $475. When: closed May–mid-Sep. LOS NOTROS: Tel 54/2902-499-510; www.losnotros.com. Cost: from $630, all-inclusive. When: closed Apr–Sep. EOLO LODGE: Tel 54/2902-492-042; www.eolo.com.ar. Cost: from $740, all-inclusive (peak), off-peak rates on request. When: closed May–mid-Sep. BEST TIMES: late Nov–early Mar for finest weather; Mar–Apr for fall foliage; Dec for a chance to help shear Alta Vista’s 22,000 sheep.
The Switzerland of South America
THE LAKE DISTRICT
Patagonia, Argentina
At the wet and wild northwestern edge of Patagonia, the windswept steppes rise into mountain foothills, pushing up against the soaring Andes and their glacial-melt lakes. This skier’s dream, 1,000 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, is the region of Bariloche, named for its main city of San Carlos de Bariloche, and owing its distinctive character to the Swiss and German immigrants who settled here and the Argentine architect Alejandro Bustillo, who designed many of the characteristic gingerbread buildings.
San Carlos de Bariloche (or simply Bariloche) stands on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi which sits within the 2-million-acre park of the same name and whose cool, crystalline rivers and lakes offer some of the world’s best fly-fishing. Still, most come here to ski, and the place to do it is Cerro Catedral’s 50-plus trails. Snowfall averages 16 inches at the base and more than 16 feet at the top, where the drop is nearly 3,400 feet. Ski season is June through October and the crowds are relatively small.
Rustic luxury is the dominant theme of the area’s resorts, including Llao Llao, on a hill overlooking the lake. Designed by Bustillo, it’s owned by the same family as Buenos Aires’s Alvear Palace (see p. 981) and cared for with the same attention to detail. Los Césares, its restaurant, and its roster of amenities are the best in the area. Just beyond the city limits is Villa Huinid, featuring 12 pine cabins with stone fireplaces, 50 country-luxe rooms, many of which overlook the lake, and the Batistin restaurant.
Take a scenic drive 50 miles north of Bariloche and you’ll find Villa La Angostura, a small town on a peninsula jutting into the lake and the place where well-to-do porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) build their vacation homes. The aptly named Correntoso (“fast-flowing”) Lake and River Hotel sits at the juncture of river and lake, taking full advantage of the incredible views. A former fishing lodge, now newly refined, it is favored by hikers and fly-fishers, but many guests opt instead to relax in the hammam and spa or to enjoy memorable meals on the restaurant’s wraparound terrace. About 70 miles farther north is San Martín de los Andes, the low-key and picturesque capital of Neuquén province, which offers many amenities for travelers.
This magnificent Patagonian countryside can be explored while staying at either of two of Argentina’s most hospitable estancias, both about an hour’s drive east of San Martín. The Estancia Quemquemtreu has just five guest rooms and is set on a 250,000-acre cattle ranch. A private stream and proximity to three of the region’s best-stocked rivers make it especially appealing to anglers, but any guest will be enticed by traditional barbecues and wildlife viewing with the Andes’s awe-inducing granite peaks as a backdrop. The estancia is also a polo ranch, and in summer months guests can watch some of the country’s best players practice and train the 40 resident polo ponies.
For a real cowboy experience, stay at the Estancia Huechahue, a 15,000-acre Anglo-Argentine cattle ranch. Guests can travel on horseback through lake-dotted rolling hills, dense forests, and high ridges where condors nest, and can also participate in rounding up, herding, and branding the livestock. Or they may opt for simply enjoying the day’s delicious asado (barbeque) lunch.
Nahuel Huapi is the most important of the region’s lakes.
WHERE: San Carlos de Bariloche is 1,001 miles/1,615 km southwest of Buenos Aires. LLAO LLAO: Tel 54/2944-448-530; www.llaollao.com. Cost: from $265 (off-peak), from $635 (peak). VILLA HUINID: Tel 54/2944-523-600; www.villahuinid.com.ar. Cost: from $175. CORRENTOSO LAKE AND RIVER HOTEL:
Tel 54/2944-1561-9728; www.correntoso.com. Cost: $380. ESTANCIA QUEMQUEMTREU: Tel 54/2972-424-410; www.quemquemtreu.com. Cost: from $500 per person, all-inclusive. ESTANCIA HUECHAHUE: Tel 54/2972-491-303; www.huechahue.com. Cost: $715, all-inclusive. When: closed Jun–Sep. BEST TIMES: Dec–Feb for warm weather; Jun–Aug for skiing; Nov–Apr for fishing.
Argentina’s Tuscany
CAFAYATE
Salta, Argentina
Manuel Fernando de Aramburu founded the town of Cafayate in 1840, but today’s population includes descendants of the Inca, who lived in the area long before that. Once considered an excursion from the colonial city of Salta (see next page), which is 115 miles and a four-hour drive north, Cafayate has become a destination in its own right. The layered red-rock terrain surrounding it, among the country’s most striking, is a paradise for hikers and horseback riders. But the true star is the dry and aromatic white wine produced from torrontés grapes, which flourish in the sandy, pink-and-tan hills of the area. The climate, elevation, and constant sunshine give the grapes their distinctive color, flavor, and sugar content.
The town hit the international radar in 2005 with the opening of the luxurious spa resort Patios de Cafayate, on the Bodega (winery) El Esteco. The 1892 main house, which encompasses flowering courtyards, is full of antiques and artwork recalling the region’s rustic history. You can drink the local wine—even bathe in it, with full-body immersion vinotherapy—or experience massage treatments using grape seeds and pulp. Just outside the center of Cafayate you’ll find the simple, 12-room Viñas de Cafayate. It allows guests to take in magnificent views of the surrounding mountains and features a pool set amid the grapevines.
North of Cafayate along Ruta 40, Argentina’s answer to U.S. Route 66, lie portions of the beautiful Calchaquíes Valley, whose landscape ranges from dense vegetation to multicolored desert reminiscent of the United States’ Southwest. Within the valley, the town of Cachi, ancient home of the Chicoanas Indians, boasts a cactus-wood–roofed church and one of the region’s finest archaeological museums as well as several shops featuring the work of local artisans. The valley’s biggest surprise is nearby Colomé, a vast (100,000-acre) high-tech winery and nine-suite luxury lodge, complete with its own helipad and riveting mountain scenery. The estancia, founded in 1831 but now owned by the Swiss master vintner Family Hess (their first vineyards opened in the Napa Valley), has some of the highest-altitude vineyards in the world. The James Turrell Museum opened on the property in 2009 and houses works by the celebrated California-born artist, famous for exploring the relationship of light and space.
The Quebrada de las Conchas (Gorge of the Shells) took its name from the shell fossils found here.
WHERE: 797 miles/1,283 km northwest of Buenos Aires. PATIOS DE CAFAYATE: Tel 54/3868-421-747; www.patiosdecafayate.com. Cost: from $300. VIÑAS DE CAFAYATE: Tel 54/3868-422-272; www.cafayatewineresort.com. Cost: from $135. BODEGA COLOMÉ: Tel 54/3868-494-044; www.bodegacolome.com. Cost: from $300 (off-peak), from $390 (peak). BEST TIMES: Feb for Serenade to Cafayate Folklore Festival; Feb–Apr for grape harvest; Nov for Torrontés Wine Festival.
Romantic Respite and a Breathtaking Train Ride
SALTA
Salta, Argentina
Argentines call it Salta la Linda: “Salta the Pretty.” Set in the distinctive and incredibly varied landscape of Argentina’s northwest, the country’s best-preserved colonial city is uniquely proud of both its Spanish and indigenous heritage. Its heart beats in the charming café-ringed Plaza de Nueve de Julio, which dates from the city’s founding in 1582 and is flanked by the pink Salta Cathedral and the former Cabildo (City Hall), the city’s oldest government building. The new and fascinating Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña (Museum of High Altitude Archaeology), or MAAM, houses exhibits on pre-Columbian culture, the highlight of which are three mummified, 500-year-old Inca children, found frozen atop an Andean peak and believed to be sacrifices to the Inca gods. In Salta, food (the city is known for its savory empanadas) and music come together at atmospheric peñas folkloricos, or folk clubs, such as El Boliche Balderrama or the Cason del Molino where the zamba (Salta’s answer to the samba) and chacarera rhythms are contagious.
Salta’s stunning countryside is dotted with pre-Columbian ruins, the vineyards that produce its well-known wines, and artisan villages, and is characterized by its deep, mineral-streaked, polychromatic quebradas (gorges) carved by rivers running down the nearby snow-draped Andes. (You’ll witness more of this spectacular landscape if you keep going 4 hours south across spectacular high-desert plateau to Cafayate; see previous page.) For an unforgettable view of this terrain along the Chilean border, board the seasonal El Tren a las Nubes (Train to the Clouds), one of the highest railroads in the world. The highlight of this 15-hour, 269-mile round-trip adventure is the 200-foot-high viaduct over a yawning chasm that you’ll glimpse just before the train turns around at an old Indian mining town 13,800 feet above sea level.
While in Salta, stay at Legado Mítico, an 11-room treasure of a hotel housed in a former private residence a 5-minute walk from the main square. Or head 15 minutes south of town to House of Jasmines, a 300-acre ranch where guests enjoy rustic luxury and lounging by the pool or in the small spa, as well as horseback riding along the Arenales River. About an hour northeast of Salta, the 11,000-acre El Bordo de las Lanzas was the home of Martín Miguel de Güemes, who fought with gauchos against Spanish royalists in the early 1800s. Today it is run as an estancia by the gregarious Arias family.
WHERE: 787 miles/1,265 km northwest of Buenos Aires. MAAM: Tel 54/387-437-0499; www.maam.culturasalta.gov.ar. EL TREN A LAS NUBES: Tel 54/387-4223-033; www.trenalasnubes.com.ar. Cost: $160, includes lunch. When: closed Dec–Mar. LEGADO MÍTICO: Tel 54/387-4228-786; www.legadomitico.com. Cost: from $155 (off-peak), from $210 (peak). HOUSE OF JASMINES: Tel 54/387-497-2002; www.houseofjasmines.com. Cost: from $215. ESTANCIA EL BORDO DE LAS LANZAS: Tel 54/387-4903-070; www.turismoelbordo.com.ar. Cost: $400, all-inclusive. BEST TIMES: Apr–Jun and Aug–Nov to avoid the rainy season and the crowds; Apr for Culture Festival; Jun for Semana Salta (Salta Week), a popular gaucho festival; Jun 17 for Güemes Gauchos Festival.
Southernmost City in the World
USHUAIA AND TIERRA DEL FUEGO
Argentina
Nothing feels more like the end of the earth than Ushuaia, the final stop on the Pan American Highway and the city closest to the South Pole. Situated at a latitude of 55 degrees south and squeezed between the Beagle Channel and the Andes, this city is the starting point for most Antarctic expeditions (see p. 1053). Yet Ushuaia, which means “bay looking to the west” in the language of the Yámana Indians who once populated the area, supports a population of 70,000 hardy souls and is a marvelous underexplored destination in its own right. It is the capital of Tierra del Fuego province, comprised of the large Isla Grande and an archipelago of hundreds of lesser islands that are shared by Chile and Argentina. The Spanish called this area Tierra del Fuego (Land of the Fire) after seeing the flames the Yámana kept constantly burning to keep warm.
Nature is the star attraction here—mountains, forested plains, glaciar Martial, and the rocky, frozen coastline along with birds such as the rare Andean condor, black-browed albatrosses, and Magellanic penguins. This beauty—and the 18 hours of summer sunlight—was once the sole consolation for Argentina’s most hardened prisoners, first sent here in the late 1800s. The old jail is now the Museo Maritimo; today’s rickety Tren del Fin del Mundo (Train of the End of the World), which makes a picturesque 40-minute ride into the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, is a replica of the one used to shuttle them to their hard labor of chopping down the now-protected lenga trees.
The frontier town’s dining and lodging options surpass expectations. Las Hayas, located on the road to the glaciar Martial, affords sweeping views of the town and surrounding bay. Closer to town, the hilltop Tierra de Leyendas is a cozy hostería with just five stylish rooms and a small but top-notch restaurant with large windows facin
g the Beagle Channel. Staying here will also put you close to Kaupe, a restaurant famed for its king crab and its stunning views.
Many visitors use Cruceros Australis for 4-day cruises from Punta Arenas (see p. 1024), the main city at the icy end of Chilean Patagonia. Comfortable, 130-person passenger ships sail between icebergs and Zodiac boats make landings that allow for visits with penguins, sea lions, and other wildlife in the Beagle and Murray channels. The ships also stop at Cape Horn National Park, the last piece of land before the open ocean and Antarctica, 600 miles away.
The Beagle Channel is named for the ship Charles Darwin sailed on during his exploration of the region.
WHERE: 1,473 miles/2,372 km south of Buenos Aires. LAS HAYAS: Tel 54/2901-430-710; www.lashayas.com.ar. Cost: from $300. TIERRA DE LEYENDAS: Tel 54/2901-443-565; www.tierradeleyendas.com.ar. Cost: from $125 (off-peak), from $189 (peak). KAUPE: Tel 54/2901-422-704; www.kaupe.com.ar. Cost: dinner $50. CRUCEROS AUSTRALIS: In the U.S., tel 877-678-3772 or 305-695-9618; www.australis.com. Cost: 4-day cruises from $1,500 (off-peak), from $1,895 (peak), all-inclusive. When: Jan–Apr and Sep–Dec. BEST TIME: Nov–Mar (austral summer), with temperatures in the 50s and waterways clearest of ice.
Subantarctic Galápagos
FALKLAND ISLANDS
British Overseas Territory
1,000 Places to See Before You Die Page 156