Argentina

Argentina took me about three days to calibrate to. Everything here runs louder than I expected: more passionate, more dramatic, more delicious, more infuriating, more beautiful. Buenos Aires alone contains enough contradiction to fuel a dozen novels, a city that looks like Paris, moves like Madrid, eats like Lyon and stays up later than any of them. I showed up for dinner at ten one night and the restaurant was still half-empty. Midnight is when things actually begin.

Buenos Aires

Each barrio is a different city. San Telmo has cobbled streets, antiques and tango on the corners, La Boca is painted in loud primary colors, and Recoleta is all Belle Époque mansions and a famous cemetery. Buenos Aires Palermo is where the cafés, bookshops and parrillas pile up, and Puerto Madero is the converted dockland where old brick warehouses now hold restaurants. Walk a lot, take the metro when you are tired, and plan on dinner after nine.

The steak deserves everything they say about it, but the story is more interesting than the headline. I ate at a parrilla in Palermo on my second night, nothing fancy, no reservation, just the charcoal smell from the sidewalk and a handwritten chalkboard, and the cut they brought me was so simple and so right that I sat there for a moment before cutting into it. Argentine beef is mostly grass-fed on the Pampas and grilled whole and slow over wood embers, and it makes most steakhouse culture elsewhere feel overwrought.

Outside the capital, the old Jesuit city of Cordoba is a university town with a colonial center, a UNESCO-listed Jesuit block and estancias in the surrounding hills. And an hour from the capital, San Antonio de Areco is the place to see gaucho traditions, leather work and the countryside that the national imagination loves. Take a day, eat an asado on an estancia, and watch the horses.

Wine country and the Andes

Pair it with a Malbec from Mendoza, which has quietly become one of the world’s great wine stories. The vineyards of Luján de Cuyo, Maipú and the Mendoza Wine Country sit at the foot of the Andes, and the combination of snow-capped peaks, poplar-lined roads and long lunches is hard to beat. Rent a bicycle in Maipú and visit three bodegas in an afternoon, or drive the high road through Uspallata toward Aconcagua Base Camp, under the highest mountain outside Asia.

The north: Salta and the Quebrada

The northwest is the Argentina that surprises people. Salta is a graceful colonial city of pink churches and peñas where folk music runs late, and from here the roads run into color. Cafayate is the high-altitude home of Torrontés wine, and the road to it passes red-rock formations in a canyon landscape. Further north, the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a UNESCO World Heritage valley, unspools through villages such as Purmamarca, whose hill of seven colors is one of the most photographed views in the country, and Tilcara. The air is thin, the sky is huge and the food leans toward empanadas, llama stew and corn.

Iguazú

In the far northeast, Iguazú Falls is a system of hundreds of cascades spread over nearly three kilometers on the border with Brazil, with the Devil’s Throat at its heart. Stay at Puerto Iguazú, take the walkways through the rainforest early, and be ready to get wet. It is one of the few natural wonders that is actually louder and bigger than the photos.

Patagonia

Then there is Patagonia, which is not so much a landscape as an argument about scale. Base yourself in El Calafate and go to the Perito Moreno Glacier. I stood at the edge on a grey morning, in front of a wall of ice about five kilometers wide, and waited. Twenty minutes later, a section the size of an apartment building sheared off into the turquoise water below with a sound like artillery. I had not expected to feel what I felt.

North of El Calafate, El Chaltén is the trekking capital, and the granite towers of Fitz Roy appear and disappear behind cloud with the temperament of a diva. I spent a full day hiking toward Laguna Torre and never got the summit view the photos promise, and I was not sorry. Further north, Bariloche and Villa La Angostura sit among lakes and forest, and on the Atlantic coast the Valdes Peninsula brings southern right whales close to shore in season. At the bottom of the continent, Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego National Park feel like the edge of the world because they very nearly are, with the Beagle Channel stretching out in front. The wind down there is a physical force, a constant companion that makes every step feel earned.

When to go: October through April for Patagonia, with December through February offering the longest days and mildest weather. Buenos Aires is a year-round city, though spring (September to November) is when I would go back. Mendoza’s wine harvest runs from February to April, which is as good a reason as any to time a trip. The north is best in the dry winter months, from April to October.

What most guides miss: They rush Patagonia. I came with a tight schedule and left wishing I had built in three more days. The trails around El Chaltén demand time, not because they are logistically complicated, but because the weather changes hourly and the best moments come to those who wait. The glacier calved when I stopped watching for it. The Fitz Roy towers cleared for forty minutes at dawn on a day I almost stayed in the tent. Build buffer days into any Patagonia itinerary. Distances in Argentina are huge, so fly between regions and spend your road time on the loops you actually want to drive. You will be glad you did.

Photography: Pexels contributors.