- Argentina - Portal público de noticias de la República Argentina.
It covers an area extending over almost 3 million km2 and travellers deciding to tour around them will be faced with an enormous cultural and geographical diversity along the way.
Argentina can hold France five times in its borders. It covers an area extending over almost 3 million square kilometers and travellers deciding to tour around them will be faced with an enormous cultural and geographical diversity along the way. Such is the diverse nature found in this country that several times visitors will experience the sensation of having left Argentina and being in another country.
As a matter of fact, travellers will meet people so different that the only thing in common they may share is the yelling of a goal. Only then will they realize that Argentina embodies a type of geographic universe endowed with a few large cities and thousands of isolated little towns, like the ones located in the enormous Patagonian landscape, or in the depth of the subtropical jungle- such towns being at a 3500 kilometer distance. On the same day there may be a 30°C temperature in one of these places whereas the temperature recorded in another town may reach 10° below zero.
For all the above mentioned reasons, Argentina stands as an invitation to travel around diversity, and enjoy a multicultural experience. Moreover, it will provide travellers with a unique opportunity to appreciate multiple types of scenery and thus admire the acme of landscape variety that may ever be encountered.
Destinations not to be missed
Buenos Aires, cosmopolitan capital city, delta and pampa regions
In a tour around Argentina travellers will have the chance to get to know Buenos Aires, a modern metropolis where they will unexpectedly come across Parisian-style places, a hectic night life and a jungle delta to go sailing. The boldest of travellers will learn to dance tango in a milonga, and sport fans will attend the unmatched Boca-River classic game taking place at “La Bombonera” or “El Monumental” stadiums. Others will travel 100 kilometers away from the city until reaching a gaucho-style ranch in order to taste “Asado” (beef cooked on grill) made with tender Argentine meat in front of the endless pampa region unfolding before the eyes of onlookers passing by.
In addition, those wanting to enjoy sunbathing and going to the beach may travel 400 kilometers south down to the Atlantic coastal beaches located in the city of Mar del Plata.
Green Chasms in Iguazu
In a one and a half hour plane trip towards Buenos Aires northwest region, travellers looking forward to finding contrasting landscape will fly over the subtropical jungle, which from the plane window rises as a fortified kingdom surrounded by a wall of trees arranged in a set of trunks heading upwards into the sky. Upon landing in the province of Misiones, visitors will walk through that wall of vegetation as if through a very narrow entrance leading to the Iguazu Falls and its so renowned Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s Throat). Over there, a deadly river leaps into the abyss, crashes against the rocks and it reappears in a mist, thus offering a refreshing sensation all over the bodies that are standing in front of such breathtaking scenery and shivering on account of the impact resulting from a deafening whirwind, whose epicenter lies at the bottom of the above mentioned Devil´s throat.
Breathtaking Patagonia
Patagonia is known as a legendary land. For the last five centuries, its mysterious magnetism has been attracting travellers of the stature of Hernando de Magallanes in his first trip around the world, Charles Darwin in his so-called “discovery” trip to unlock the laws of life, and runaway bandits such as Butch Cassidy and Kid Sundance, who in its deserted vast plateau encountered another type of maze which cut them off from the world.
Sharing borders with Chile, Patagonia extends over a 787.291 square kilometer area only on the Argentine side. It is such a vast and enormous land that nobody has ever been able to unearth all of its charms. Yet, its population density is less than two inhabitants per square kilometer and it is worth mentioning that there are many more penguins than people living in this area. In addition, the Patagonian region is inhabited by the world´s smallest deer –the pudu pudu — and the largest bird in the kingdom of the heavens: the condor.
Tourists can head towards this amazing “Patagonian universe” by taking a two-hour plane trip from Buenos Aires. They may also reach this region by sailing on cruisers that dock in Ushuaia Bay –in the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego, which hosts the last harbour before the “End of the world Train”.
In the steppe region- embodying this plateau extending from the bottom of the Andes to the coast--one can drive hours without bumping into anyone. In the Andina region, travellers may walk or drive whole days along lakes and thick wooden areas where one can spot over 2600 year-old trees, such as the larches in the province of Chubut. In the Glacier National Park, visitors will be amazed at seeing how the ice glitters like a white flash powder gets reflected onto the glacier. Later on they may go Catamaran sailing around the Argentine lake transparent waters holding enormous icebergs that go past the two sides of the boat as if they were heavenly galleons drifting away.
In the Perito Moreno Glacier, if travellers are lucky enough, they will have the chance to watch fearlessly how an ice tower as if it were a 20-storey building tumbles down with an apocalyptic clamor, sinks into the water, comes afloat after being shattered into ice pieces and leaves “sailing” along the channel.
There exists one Patagonia or a countless number of Patagonias for each one of us. Its mystery captivates visitors and causes them to drive into the vastness of the void along Route 40, where the steppe landscape edges away into an endless horizon. Less than half a century ago, Tehuelches indian caravans moved freely along these lands and even today, the Patagonian region is regarded as one of the last corners of the earth preserving part of its air of a natural paradise and remaining untouched by men, where its fauna live in complete freedom.
So far nobody has been able to put into words what Patagonia is like–and there are thousands of accounts describing this region. Nevertheless, the truth is that Patagonia is a destination that ought to be visited by every “regular traveller”, who after going into its vast regions will experience such a mysterious sensation that will definitely stay in his mind for as long as he lives.
Salta and Jujuy´s Loneliness
On the northwest extreme of the Argentine territory, tourists may take a two-hour plane trip from its capital city and thus come into contact with the Kollasuyo indians´ culture still preserved in the Inca Empire Southern region. One may get close to these native inhabitants by visiting the The Museum of High Altitude of Archeology -MAAM- where three Inca children´s mummies are exhibited in an offering made to the Sun 500 years ago at the peak of the Llullaiaco vulcano. In fact, the most impactful archeological sites in the Northwest region are the Quilmes Indians´ city ruins lying in the province of Tucuman, which is a fortified fortress at the top of a hill where indians withstood the Spanish siege for a 130-year period.
When touring around the Quebrada de Humahuaca –located in the province of Jujuy, an unwarned traveller may think he is in Bolivia or in Peru. But he will set foot into another one of the many Argentina scenery types– perhaps the most native like, which flourishes on the faces of the native indians´ population, on the colored skirts that women hold around their waist with a sheep-thread girdle, or on the llama woollen chequered ponchos with which men protect themselves from the mountain cold weather. Almost all of them continuously “chew” a pill made from coca leaves that causes their cheeks to become bulky. Moreover, there are people who still speak the milenary Quechua language. Religion is also a unique issue to consider since people equally revere the Christians´ God and native deities such as Pachamama or Mother Earth, to which on celebration days they feed and give coca leaves and chicha to drink through a pagan hole dug in the land.
The Quebrada de Humahuaca culture displays its own music, a native cuisine and still today preserves some twenty-two indian fortresses aiming at the region defence. This is why it was declared a Heritage of Mankind by UNESCO in 2003.
The Puna region, an arid altiplateau rising at a 4000 meter altitude being shared by the provinces of Salta, Catamarca and Jujuy, stands as one of the most distinctive geographic traits of the Northwest region. Over there, and next to the road, travellers will come across amazingly beautiful lonely hamlets, with 5 sun-dried clay brick and straw-roofed houses, a sheep yard and a sun-dried clay brick chapel, as well.
At the Puna region, tourists can visit the Salinas Grandes comprising a vast white plateau with a cracked floor in the shape of hexagons that are reproduced as perfectly as those of a spinerweb. When leaving these quintissential arid types of landscape, everyone experiences quite a physical sensation of having toured around the depths of the “wind and loneliness kingdom” (or having got to know the native Argentine indians´ calm faces).
Andina Cuyan Region
For those travellers having enough time to tour around every single corner of Argentine diversity, there is a fifth region known as Cuyo, centrally located in the country and made up of the provinces of Mendoza, La Rioja, San Juan and San Luis, which is worth visiting.
A tour around the Cuyan Region may start in the province of Mendoza, where the Andes Mountains rise up to 7 thousand meters from Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in America. Mendoza´s uniqueness is associated with its paved roads sliding into the Andino valleys and moving forward at the bottom of mammoth mountains where the travellers´ eyes adapt to a new space conception, in an area holding 5 thousand meter mountains that seem to be rather small when compared to others that are definitely higher. When touring around such high mountain roads, tourists get the chance to visit the famous Mendocino wines holds and vineyards; these wines being regarded as the top ones in the world.
The major attractive features found in the provinces of La Rioja and San Juan are the Talampaya National Park and the Moon´s Valley. Both stem from a geological basin that arose from the depth of the ground 70 million years ago, when the Andes mountains range emerged. And what appeared in this region was precisely the one that had been the land surface in the Triassic period–between 248 and 65 million years ago-, along with petrified fossiles from the first dinosaurs that walked along the planet, such as the little eoraptor. Talampaya and The Moon´s Valley (the official name of this valley is Ischigualasto Provincial Park) comprise a big desert with narrow canyons and straight red sandstone cliffs, thus shaping a maze with blind alleys, sedimentary towers and evaporated winding water flows. The province of San Luis also owns a National Park being similar to the previous one known as Sierra de las Quijadas, which allows to fully conduct a trip to the beginning of the world by going through Jurassic and Triassic stages, where walkers will come across a huge dinosaur footprint imprinted on the land, and will have the feeling that at any time a group of pterodactiles will appear flapping their wings from behind an enormous wall.
Jesuitic Córdoba
The touristic region embodying the central province of Córdoba is very popular in Summer time among Argentine tourists, who are attracted by their green hills and simple river beaches standing as a good option to resort to when wanting to avoid hot weather in the big city. Foreigners visiting this province usually stop by a series of Jesuitic ranches (or labor premises) where in colonial times such religious congregation sorted out indians so that they would work. The circuit of Jesuitic Ranches in Córdoba was declared Heritage of Humankind by UNESCO in 2001.
