Argentina In 2-3 days
Stick with Buenos Aries, which offers an ideal citybreak. Browse the antiques market at San Telmo, explore la Recoleta cemetery – Eva Peron’s final resting place, and watch live tango in the streets in the colourful working class neighbourhood of La Boca.
If you have an extra day, take a day trip across the Rio Plate to La Colonia in Uruguay, a neat colonial town of cobbled streets and graceful colonial buildings.
In 7-9 days
Spend a day or two in Buenos Aries, taking in the best of the capital, then hop on a flight to Tierra del Fuego.
You’ll land at Ushuaia, the town at the bottom of the world, where the streets are lined with cafes and shops selling tractor spares. If the weather’s good, take a trip out into the Beagle channel to spot seals, seabirds and, if you lucky, whales. If you’d prefer to stay on land, head for the nearby Tierra del Fuego National Park.
Next take a bus up to Perito Moreno glacier. This vast river of ice carves its way between two mountains before crashing into a deep blue glacial lake.
The viewpoint on a tongue of land brings you tantalisingly close to the face of the glacier, wait long enough and you’re bound to see it carving – shedding chunks of ice the size of skyscrapers into the blue-green water, sending waves across the surface of the lake.
End your trip at another of Argentina’s natural wonders – Iguazu falls. Right on the border with Brazil the Iguazu river crashes into a gorge in the jungle. The sheer volume of water on the move is humbling. The Argentinians have taken it up a level by building a 1 mile walkway out over the river, to a viewpoint poised over “the Devlis Throat” massive funnel that ends in a seething mass of whitewater. Take a raincoat.
Two weeks +
In addition to Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, the Moreno Glacier and Iguazu Falls, head for Bariloche, a picturesque town in the Andes, home to Argentina’s skiing and chocolate industry – that’s two good reasons right there. Bariloche makes a great walking base in the summer months.
Spend some time in wine country, either around Mendoza, or further north, near Salta, where verdant valleys are interspersed with semi-desert landscapes of eerie rock formations and old colonial mission towns.
Wildlife buffs should head for Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast, a Unesco world heritage site that protects colonies of seals, penguins and migratory seabirds. Killer whales are often seen here.
For the genuine Argentinian country experience, a stay on an estancia might offer horse-trekking barbecues and red wine beneath the stars.
Misiones province is reachable by daytrip from Iguazu, but a longer stay will give you a chance to explore some of the remarkable ruined Jesuit monasteries in this area. Abandoned in the 17th century, these carved red sandstone cities have been partly reclaimed by the forests and are now strangely peaceful places.
