The world's most spectacular wildernesses can be hard to reach. Not so in Argentine Patagonia, just a short drive away from the airport at El Calafate you enter the stunning Los Glaciares National Park. This budget holiday includes walks in some of the loveliest landscapes in the country including the volcano-dotted lake district.

Your trip begins and ends in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, considered to be Latin America's most European city, with its wide boulevards, colonial architecture and café society. Fly onto the Alpine-style resort town of Bariloche in the lake district, where you can explore the snow-dusted mountains, lakes and evergreen forests along gentle walking trails. From here you continue south to the windswept landscape of Patagonia, where you get up close to the vast Perito Moreno Glacier, which calves huge chunks of ice into the water below. El Chaltén is the jumping off point for explorations of the Fitz Roy region of Patagonia, which offers you the chance to admire some of the most dramatic mountain scenery on the continent.