Argentina is a fabulous place for people from the northern hemisphere to enjoy a vacation from our cruel dark winter. Here are some good reasons to visit Argentina:
- 15-17.5 hours per day of sunlight in December and January
- incredibly friendly people, enough of whom speak English that you can get around reasonably well without Spanish skills
- beautiful unspoiled scenery, one of the only parts of South America that still has some wilderness
- less rain and wind than Chile–Argentina is on the eastern side of the Andes and therefore in their “rain shadow”
- ridiculously low prices ever since the 2001 devaluation; hotels and restaurant meals are 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of comparable services in the U.S.
- families traveling with children will find the little ones welcomed everywhere
Days 1-3: Buenos Aires. Most of the domestic flights within Argentina leave from the downtown airport. You, on the other hand, will be arriving at Ezeiza, a 45-minute trip from the center of town. If you’ve already got your luggage and are in a taxi you might as well spend a few days exploring B.A. rather than attempting to catch a flight somewhere else. B.A. is a lifestyle city more than a tourist city so try to get some introductions to friends or relatives of friends.
Day 4-6: Iguazu Falls. A 1.5-hour flight to the NE brings you into subtropical jungle and the world’s most powerful waterfall. The falls are best explored from the Argentine side. If you are a U.S. citizen you need to get a visa in advance and fork over $140 to visit the Brazilian side, which really isn’t worth the trouble unless you’re desperate to take a scenic helicopter flight (banned in Argentine airspace). If you’ve got the Brazilian visa it might be worth adding an extra day. Once in Brazil you have the opportunity to proceed further across the Paraguayan border and visit a big hydroelectric project upstream, sadly one that inundated a waterfall of a similar size and beauty to Iguazu.
Day 7-14: fly from Iguazu to San Martin de los Andes, in northern Patagonia (might be a little tough to arrange, at least without an overnight in B.A.). Try to find a rental car that you can drop off in Bariloche and/or take a “Seven Lakes route” tour bus at the end of your stay in San Martin. Be aware that even in the middle of summer Patagonia can be a chilly 10-20 degrees C and windy. At 41 degrees south the latitude here is comparable to Boston in the Northern Hemisphere. However, there isn’t a big continental land mass to generate hot summer temps. Patagonia is like a little finger poked into the cold Southern Ocean.
Day 15-17: Calafate. Unless you’ve seen a lot of glaciars in Alaska or New Zealand, the sight of a thick glaciar calving icebergs into a lake should make Calafate worth the stop. You have to stop here anyway if you’re flying from Bariloche to Ushuaia so you might as well get off the plane.
Day 18-20: Ushuaia. At 54 degrees south this is the southernmost city it the world (comparable to Edmonton, Alberta or Manchester, England). Go hiking in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. Take the all-day Rumbo Sur cruise that visits the sea lions, penguins, and Harberton ranch. Enjoy the snow-covered mountains behind the city. Be prepared for cold temperatures, at least a bit of rain most days, and some wind. A typical mid-summer temperature here is 12C. Warning: Ushuaia is a bit like Alaska in hospitality as well as scenery. People move here because they don’t really like other people… then they get jobs in hotels and restaurants. On average the welcome you receive in Ushuaia is better than in most parts of the U.S. but the quality of services and friendliness is lower than in the rest of Argentina.
Day 21: You can get a direct flight from Ushuaia to Ezeiza (EZE). Hang out at the airport Internet cafe and write to your friends about what a fun trip you had. Then catch an overnight flight to NY (10+ hours) or Miami (8 hours). The First Class seats on the American Airlines 777s to Miami fold completely flat for sleeping.
For the next trip….
- take the ferry to Colonia, Uruguay (tiny colonial town) or Montevideo, Uruguay (the capital)
- visit the northwestern provinces, which have more colonial and Indian influence
- tour the wine country of Mendoza and then head through a pass in the Andes to Santiago, Chile
sounds like you had a fun time…patagonia sounds cool…and those falls are awesome…did you get to see them from above?
anyhoo, when you coming back down under?
Being an American citizen I did not want to go through the hassle of getting a Brazilian visa just for one day. Thus I never got to the helicopter rides. I will go back to Iguazu though! I think I might go to Brazil in February or March. Maybe go to Panama to see the Canal in late January/early February. I had been thinking about going to Europe but there is so much to see in Latin America and the people are so friendly down there that it is hard to justify going yet again to Europe, much of which seems thoroughly urbanized and Americanized.
It is wild that Brazil requires an visa for Americans. I recently read in a news story that a judge in Brazil was requiring Americans to be fingerprinted, a reaction to our new fingerprinting requirements after 9/11. Is this visa requirement some sort of tit for tat reaction to our laws requiring visas for Brazilians? And if so, don’t you think that the Brazilians are missing out on tourism and commerce in the exact manner that you described by your unwillingness to travel into and spend money in Brazil? I know that I am being an Ugly American here, but I can’t not point out that we have our policies for valid reasons, namely that we have a large number of illegal aliens and others that overstay their visa. I doubt Brazil sees too many Americans immigrating illegally or trying to blow up the joint. (From everywhere, not hardly just Brazil. http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00B9jG describes a 63 year old, for 16 years an illegal immigrant from UK.) For a relatively poor but beautiful country Brazil appears to be playing their hand poorly.
The New York Times agrees with Philip’s assessment:
Homage to Patagonia
Hi Phil,
Did you bring your camera with? I would assume yes, when can we expect to see photos?
Hey Joseph,
You are a ugly American. I think think all Americans should be strip searched and have the rubber glove treatment for been so arrogant. Not everyone wants to go and live in the US; in fact many of us are no longer going to the US to visit. It’s too damn dangerous. However, the way the US dollar going, it might be a cheap tourist destination rather like Argentina, but then again the ugly Americans aren’t very friendly!!
You mistake us for the French with that arrogance comment. Also, we are largely very friendly. However, we have more to worry about right now that practically any other nation. I hardly think this is opinion, the last few years gives a mountain of evidence to this fact.
We have more to worry about than any other nation? Nonsense. Try putting yourself in the average Iraqi’s shoes.
You ought to hit Bariloche and El Chalten next time as well. Bariloche is a cute town with excellent hiking (Cerro Catedral, Tronador, etc) nearby and skiing in the… well, I’d call it ‘summer’, being July and all, but it’s the austral winter. Anyways.
Chalten has Cerro Torre. Hike in and behold some of the nastiest weather on earth. On a clear day I almost got blown off a ridge sideways on the approach — good thing I rented some old hiking poles for $2. It’s unreal how brutal the weather systems that pound Cerro Torre are — it’s also unreal how beautiful that rime-ice-encrusted, 7000-sheer-face granite bowling pin is in the sunrise.
Now, granted, the night before, the entirety of the seasonal climber population had been flooded out of Campo Bridwell. So when I got up at 4AM to hike in, I was all alone. As in “gee, when did the neutron bomb go off in camp?” alone. But getting over towards the base of El Mocho and looking up at that monster was one of the seminal experiences of my life.
I’ll be going back once I can get up El Cap in a day…
Um, that would be ‘7000 foot sheer face’ on Cerro Torre’s southeast face. Oopsie. A team of insane Italians put an aid route directly up the middle of the face in the mid 90’s — “Infinito Sud” — and had to haul an aluminum box to sleep in, up the wall, to avoid being killed by the rockfall periodically released by the melting rime ice each morning.
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