Buenos Aires is only the first act. Then comes the ice.
Which Perito Moreno day actually puts you on the glacier. What a tango table costs once dinner is on it. Whether Iguazú needs one day or two. Reviews of every tour you can book in Argentina.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruise
Glacier, tango table, falls, bodega. The four days the rest gets planned around.
The bookings a first Argentine trip hangs off, what each one costs, and what travellers say once they are home.
- 01The ice dayPerito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat CruiseA wall of ice that calves while you stand on the walkways. Do the balconies first and the boat after, not the other way round.
02The tango nightPiazzolla Tango Show with Optional DinnerAn orchestra and a dozen dancers in a marble theatre off Florida street. The dinner sitting before the curtain is optional and it is the late seat that is worth having.
03The falls, up closeGran Aventura Boat and Argentinian Falls TourThe boat runs into the spray under the Argentine side. You will be soaked to the skin, and that is the whole point of it.
04The Mendoza day3 Wineries, Olive Oil Factory Tour & TastingThree bodegas and an olive mill under the Andes, with every tasting poured where the wine was made.
Perito Moreno from the balconies, from a boat, or with crampons on.
Southern Patagonia sells one thing above everything else and it is glacial. Three ways onto the ice, what it costs to board each, and how much of the day each one takes.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruise
The balcony daySteel walkways at eye level with the ice front, then the bus home.
Ice underfootCrampons, a guided line across the surface, whisky poured over its own ice.
Fitz Roy on footNorth to El Chaltén for the granite towers and a long walk under them.
Over the borderTorres del Paine and back between breakfast and dark.
All 43 days on the ice →
What the whole country books first, from Ushuaia to the Quebrada.
The full Argentine catalogue →The days out that sell through fastest, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruise
Travel from El Calafate to Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park with hotel pickup and a Spanish-English guide. You get about three hours for the boardwalks, plus an optional one-hour boat ride to the ice wall. Guides such as Tobias, Noela, and Sebastian have been praised for clear explanations and smooth transport.
From · $80
Read our review →
2
Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner
from $48
3
City Highlights Guided Tour with Transfer
from $38
4
La Boca Guided Walking Tour in English
from $13
5
Brazil/Argentina Sides Iguazu Falls Day Tour
from $49
6
La Recoleta Cemetery Guided Tour in English
from $13
7
Tango Show at Tango Porteño & Optional Dinner
from $40
8
Full-Day Tour to El Chaltén
from $130
Buenos Aires first, then the long flights south and west.
A capital that eats after ten, a port at the end of the road, vineyards under the high Andes, a jungle river full of waterfalls, a glacier town and the red valleys of the northwest. Six bases, and the best day out from each.
Buenos Aires runs late, and so should your day.
Everything in Buenos Aires →
Start among the mausoleums in Recoleta, spend the afternoon on the painted lanes of La Boca, then eat at eleven and watch tango after it. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
A tango house, with or without the dinner sitting
The big houses run a dinner sitting and then the show. Skip the dinner if you would rather put the money on the seats, keep it if you want the whole night handled in one booking.
La Boca and San Telmo on foot
Caminito is four blocks long and the rest of La Boca is not a visitor neighbourhood. A guide keeps you on the right streets and explains why the houses are painted in leftover ship enamel.
Argentine beef, course by course
A closed-door parrilla where the cuts arrive in order and somebody talks you through each one. The counter seats go weeks in advance and there are not many of them.
Malbec under the Andes, beef over embers, a long lunch on the pampas.
Argentina eats late and drinks better than its prices suggest. Book the bodega for the morning before the heat, the parrilla for the night nothing else is on, and the ranch day for a Sunday.
From the Beagle Channel to the Paraná, this country reads best from a deck.
Catamarans out to the sea lion islands off Ushuaia, the launch that runs under the Iguazú falls, whale water off Península Valdés, and the willow delta an hour north of the capital.
What a day out in Argentina actually costs.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it charges. Plenty of the best Argentine days cost less than the steak dinner afterwards.
City walks, tango tickets, bodega mornings and the short runs out of Salta.
The full days: the falls circuit, the Beagle Channel catamaran, the Andes road under Aconcagua.
Glacier trekking, private guides and the long crossings to El Chaltén and Torres del Paine.
- 1Gaucho and Ranch Day Tourfrom $168
- 2Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruisefrom $396
- 3Penguin Watching Tour by Catamaranfrom $180
Three things that happen in Argentina and nowhere else.
Mountains and wine are everywhere. A dance invented in the port, a working cattle estancia that feeds you lunch, and a steam train to the end of the inhabited world are not.
The Tango Houses
Tango came out of the immigrant tenements around the Riachuelo in the 1880s and spent thirty years being disreputable before Paris made it respectable. The big Buenos Aires houses now put an orchestra, a singer and a dozen dancers on a stage, most of them with a dinner sitting before the curtain. The neighbourhood milongas take no bookings at all and do not really start until midnight.
- 1Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 2,122 reviews
- 2Tango Show at Tango Porteño & Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 981 reviews
- 3Madero Tango Show with Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 748 reviews
The Estancia Day
An hour or two out of the capital the city stops and the flat grass starts. The ranches that survived open their gates for the day: an empanada and a glass on arrival, riding or a cart round the paddocks before noon, an asado that runs to four courses, then folk dancing while the coals go out. The gauchos riding for you are the ones working the herd the other six days.
- 19-Course Argentine Meat Tasting at Fogón Asado★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 826 reviews
- 2Gaucho and Ranch Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 809 reviews
- 3Gaucho Day Trip from Buenos Aires: Santa Susana Ranch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 272 reviews
The Train of the End of the World
The narrow-gauge line out of Ushuaia was laid by prisoners hauling timber for the penal colony, and steam engines still work the last few kilometres into Tierra del Fuego National Park. The carriages are small, the commentary is all convicts and beech forest, and it puts you at the park gate with the rest of the day free.
- 1National Park & Train of the End of the World Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 811 reviews
- 2National Park and Train Trip End of the World Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 414 reviews
- 3National Park, Train, and Beagle Channel Navigation★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 182 reviews
Four Argentine bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four run on daily caps, river levels and fixture lists that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and CruiseThe ice walk runs on a daily cap and an age limit, and once a day is full nobody gets added to it.
- 02Gran Aventura Boat and Argentinian Falls TourThe launch under the falls stops whenever the river runs too high, so the settled days sell through first.
- 03Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & StadiumThe stadium closes to visitors around fixtures, and the fixture dates move.
- 04National Park & Train of the End of the World TourA short narrow-gauge line with a handful of carriages and a fixed timetable. There is no extra service.
When Patagonia shuts down, the rest of Argentina is at its best.
From May to September the far south runs on short daylight, and sailings, passes and trekking days thin out or stop altogether. The rest of the country never notices. Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Salta and Iguazú work all year, and the southern winter is when the capital is cheapest and the wine roads are quietest.
By place — the capital, Patagonia, the Andes, the north
By kind of day — ice, water, table or road
Buenos Aires, Iguazú, the ice, Ushuaia: the run almost everybody does first.
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