Sustainable Travel · Argentina

Argentina: A Conservation Traveller’s Guide to Whales, Wetlands, the Andes and Patagonia

From southern right whales off Península Valdés to reintroduced jaguars in the Iberá wetlands, a region-by-region guide to Argentina’s wildlife, and to the peoples, history and food you meet along the way.

By SEVENSEAS Media | Sustainable Travel

Argentina covers about 2.78 million square kilometres, which makes it the eighth-largest country in the world. It runs from subtropical forest on the border with Brazil to the glaciers of the southern Andes and the Beagle Channel at the bottom of the continent. You could spend an entire holiday in a single province and still leave most of it unseen. Plenty of visitors do the opposite and take the whistle-stop tour, flying between Buenos Aires, Iguazú Falls and a glacier in two weeks. That can be a good trip, but it tends to shrink the country to a handful of postcards. This guide goes region by region, with the wildlife you can expect in each and some notes on travelling in a way that does the place justice.

Peoples and cultures

Argentina is often described as a nation of immigrants, and in Buenos Aires the description fits. The country received millions of European migrants, most of them Italian and Spanish, between the late nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth, and their influence runs through the food, the accent and the architecture of the capital.

That picture leaves a great deal out. In the 2022 national census, 1,306,730 people identified as Indigenous or as descendants of Indigenous peoples, 2.9 per cent of the population, and the census recorded 58 distinct peoples and 53 ancestral languages. In Jujuy and Salta, in the far northwest, the share is about one in ten. The Mapuche, the largest group, are concentrated in northern Patagonia, with most of them living in Neuquén, Río Negro, Buenos Aires and Chubut provinces. Kolla and other Andean communities live in the northwestern highlands, and Guaraní, Qom and Wichí communities in the subtropical north and the Gran Chaco, according to the overview of Indigenous peoples in Argentina.

For travellers this has practical consequences. Where a community runs its own lodging or guiding, choosing it keeps money in the place you came to see. Ask before photographing people. In the northwest, the August offerings to Pachamama, the Andean earth mother, are religious occasions first, and visitors should behave as guests.

In the countryside, the gaucho, the horseman of the Pampas, is still a national figure, and many estancias take visitors out riding.

A short history

People lived across this territory for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, and the Inca road system reached into the northwest; its Argentine stretches are part of the Qhapaq Ñan World Heritage Site. The provinces declared independence from Spain in San Miguel de Tucumán on 9 July 1816.

In the late nineteenth century the state pushed its frontier south through a series of military campaigns known as the Conquest of the Desert, which killed and displaced thousands of Mapuche, Tehuelche and other Indigenous people and opened the Pampas and Patagonia to ranching. That history lies underneath many of the estancias that now welcome visitors. The twentieth century brought Peronism and a long run of coups, ending with the military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, during which thousands of people were disappeared. In Buenos Aires, the former ESMA naval school, used as a clandestine detention centre in those years, is now a museum and site of memory and was added to the World Heritage List in 2023.

Food

Beef is the obvious headline. An asado, meat and offal cooked slowly over wood or charcoal, is as much a social occasion as a meal, and a Sunday one can take up most of the afternoon. Empanadas change from province to province. In the northwest, locro, a thick stew of maize, beans, squash and meat, is the dish of national holidays. Mate, an infusion of yerba mate leaves (Ilex paraguariensis) drunk from a shared gourd through a metal straw, gets passed around offices, buses and parks all day.

Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes, produces most of the country’s wine, including much of the Malbec it is known for abroad. In Chubut, the villages founded by Welsh settlers from 1865 onwards still serve afternoon tea with dense fruit cake, which makes a good stop on the way to or from the coast.

Buenos Aires

Most visitors arrive in the capital, and it deserves more than a night between flights. Tango, listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage shared with Uruguay, is still danced at neighbourhood milongas as well as in the shows staged for tourists. For nature, the Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve, on reclaimed land beside the old port, is the place to watch waterbirds without leaving the city, and a first look at wetland species you will meet again further north.

The Northwest: Jujuy and Salta

The Quebrada de Humahuaca in Jujuy is a valley roughly 150 kilometres long, cut by the Río Grande, and a World Heritage Site since 2003 for its long record as a route for people and goods between the high Andes and the plains. The villages along it, Purmamarca, Tilcara and Humahuaca among them, sit beneath hillsides striped red, green and ochre by their mineral layers. Jujuy has the highest share of people identifying as Indigenous of any province, according to the 2022 census, and the markets, music and food of the valley carry Andean traditions more visibly than anywhere else in the country.

Higher up, on the puna above 3,500 metres, herding families keep llamas (Lama glama), and goats are grazed on the lower slopes. The llama’s wild relative, the vicuña (Vicugna vicugna), moves across the high plains in small family groups, and the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) rides the thermals above the ridges. Take the altitude seriously and climb slowly. A night or two at lower elevation, in Salta city or Purmamarca, before heading onto the puna makes a difference.

Iberá and Iguazú

The Esteros del Iberá in Corrientes province is one of the largest freshwater wetlands in South America and, for a conservation traveller, one of the most interesting places in the country. Hunting and habitat loss wiped the jaguar (Panthera onca) out of the province around 70 years ago. In January 2021 the Rewilding Argentina foundation, working with the national and provincial park authorities, released a mother and two cubs, the first jaguars to live free in Corrientes in decades. By early 2025 the foundation put the free-living population at more than 35. Seeing one is still unlikely, but the other wildlife is easy to find from the boats and trails around Colonia Carlos Pellegrini: capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus) and yacare caimans (Caiman yacare) are all regulars.

Further north in Misiones, Iguazú National Park was inscribed by UNESCO in 1984. The falls spread across nearly three kilometres of the Iguazú River on the border with Brazil, inside one of the larger remaining blocks of Atlantic Forest. South American coatis (Nasua nasua) work the walkways, bold because people feed them; please do not, as they bite. Look up as well as down, for toco toucans (Ramphastos toco) and the great dusky swifts (Cypseloides senex) that nest behind the falling water. Arrive at opening time if you can, before the tour groups reach the Devil’s Throat.

Península Valdés and the Chubut coast

Península Valdés, a World Heritage Site since 1999, is the reason many wildlife travellers come to Argentina. Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) arrive in the sheltered gulfs each year to mate and calve, and Argentina’s national tourism board gives the season as June to December. The same source says Puerto Pirámides, the only village on the peninsula, is the only place in Argentina authorised for boat-based whale watching. Early in the season, mothers and calves often come close enough to be watched from the shore at El Doradillo beach near Puerto Madryn, and from late September the best sightings move to the waters off Puerto Pirámides, according to one local operator.

Argentina declared the southern right whale a national natural monument in 1984, under Law 23.094, and banned the hunting of all cetaceans in its waters in 2002. Legal protection has not removed the pressures on the population. Kelp gulls (Larus dominicanus) at Valdés have learned to peck skin and blubber from the backs of right whales at the surface, and the wounds fall hardest on calves. Greenpeace Argentina has campaigned against offshore oil exploration in the Argentine Sea, which it describes as an imminent threat to the species.

The rest of the peninsula is open steppe and long, empty shoreline. South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens) and southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) breed on its beaches. At Punta Norte, orcas (Orcinus orca) sometimes surge onto the shingle to take sea lion pups, a hunt that, according to regional travel guide Patagonline, is mostly seen in March and April. Inland, guanacos (Lama guanicoe), lesser rheas (Rhea pennata), Patagonian maras (Dolichotis patagonum) and the South American grey fox (Lycalopex griseus) cross the gravel roads. Drive slowly. Distances on the peninsula are long and the roads are loose.

South of Trelew, Punta Tombo holds one of the largest mainland colonies of Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus), and it is open to visitors from September to April. It is also a colony in decline. Long-term research led by the University of Washington biologist Dee Boersma found that breeding pairs fell from about 400,000 in the 1980s to about 150,000 in 2019, with heat waves and other climate events among the causes. Stay on the marked paths. The birds nest in shallow burrows that collapse underfoot.

The Patagonian Andes and the far south

Along the Andes, Patagonia shifts from lake country in the north to ice fields in the south. Nahuel Huapi National Park, which surrounds Bariloche, was created in 1934 and is the oldest in the national system. Much of this region is Mapuche territory, and many place names, Nahuel Huapi included, are Mapudungun. The park authority lists the huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus), an endangered deer found only in the southern Andes, among its species, along with the Andean condor and the imperial shag. In the beech forests, listen for the austral pygmy owl (Glaucidium nana), a small owl that often calls in daylight.

Further south, Los Glaciares National Park, inscribed by UNESCO in 1981, holds the Perito Moreno glacier near El Calafate and the granite peaks around El Chaltén, the country’s best-known trekking town. On the trails you are likely to meet guanacos, the culpeo (Lycalopex culpaeus), the larger of Patagonia’s two foxes, and the southern crested caracara (Caracara plancus), a raptor that scavenges as readily as it hunts. In Tierra del Fuego, boat trips from Ushuaia along the Beagle Channel pass islets crowded with sea lions and cormorants. Around the town itself, look for the dolphin gull (Leucophaeus scoresbii), with its red bill and legs, and the chimango caracara (Milvago chimango), a small brown falcon that turns up on shorelines and roadsides alike.

Seasons and access rules change from year to year. Check with the relevant national or provincial park authority before booking, and see the national tourism board’s wildlife calendar for current dates.

SEVENSEAS Media · Conservation Journalism for the Ocean