Active Argentina: Walking in Patagonia

The world’s best mountain scenery can be hard to reach. Not so in Argentine Patagonia where you can access world-class hiking trails within a short drive of the comfortable tourist hubs of the Lake District, Los Glaciares National Park and Tierra del Fuego. Progressing south all the way to the tip of South America, we’ve chosen a series of thrilling day walks across these regions, ensuring that you return each day to a cosy hotel within reach of Argentina’s more worldly pleasures of great food and wine. This holiday should suit the actively-inclined weekend walker: whilst we’ve thrown in a couple of long-distance trails, hiking is generally of low intensity and not technical.

Beginning with a couple of nights in Buenos Aires, you’ll fly to the city of Bariloche in the Lake District, a springboard for a medley of trails in Nahuel Huapi National Park. A short hop by air further south is El Calafate, gateway to one of South America’s finest wildernesses, Los Glaciares National Park with its iconic Perito Moreno Glacier and the Fitz Roy massif where trails meander amidst sub-Antarctic forests and glacial lagoons. Finally to the end of the earth, Tierra del Fuego, where just a few kilometres inland from the busy port of Ushuaia is a quiet wilderness of ancient forest clinging to mountain cliffs, hidden streams and views over vertiginous glaciers.