The icePerito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruisefrom $80
The fallsGran Aventura Boat and Argentinian Falls Tourfrom $170 The glacier calves at noon. The tango starts at midnight.
Which side of Iguazú to give the day to. What a Mendoza cellar afternoon costs with lunch in it. Whether the boat in front of Perito Moreno is worth the extra. Reviews of every tour you can book in Argentina.
Four days that decide the shape of an Argentine trip.
A capital, a glacier, a cellar under the Andes and the train at the bottom of the map. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The first morningCity Highlights Guided Tour with TransferPlaza de Mayo, Recoleta, La Boca and San Telmo on one loop with hotel pickup. The quickest way to work out which barrio you want to go back to on foot.
02The Patagonian dayFull-Day Tour to El ChalténFour hours north from El Calafate to the Fitz Roy massif, a walk in the valley and back after dark. Take it on the clear day, not the planned day.
03The Mendoza day3 Wineries, Olive Oil Factory Tour & TastingThree bodegas and an olive press under the Andes with tastings at each. The cheapest serious wine day anywhere in the country.
04The far southNational Park & Train of the End of the World TourThe narrow-gauge train into Tierra del Fuego, then the park lakes and the last post office on the Beagle Channel.
Buenos Aires first, then pick your Argentina: ice, falls, vines or altiplano.
A capital that eats at midnight, a glacier you hear before you see, a wall of water on two borders, malbec at a thousand metres and a gorge striped in seven colours. Six places to start, and the best day out from each.
Buenos Aires does its best work after nine.
Dinner starts late, the show starts later, and the opera house is worth an afternoon of its own. Three kinds of porteño evening, and what it costs to walk into each.
The Argentine days out that travellers take most.
Every tour we have reviewed in Argentina →The tours that fill before anything else on the site, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner
Spend an evening at Piazzolla Tango in Buenos Aires, inside the grand Galería Güemes. You can book the 75-minute tango show alone, add two drinks, or choose a three-course dinner with unlimited drinks. Expect the Piazzolla Tango sextet, Argentine singers, skilled dancers, and music linked to Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Tango.
From · $48
Read our review →
2
La Boca Guided Walking Tour in English
from $13
3
Brazil/Argentina Sides Iguazú Falls Day Tour
from $49
4
La Recoleta Cemetery Guided Tour in English
from $13
5
Tango Show at Tango Porteño & Optional Dinner
from $40
6
9-Course Argentine Meat Tasting at Fogón Asado
from $93
7
Gaucho and Ranch Day Tour
from $168
8
Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruise
from $396
Patagonia is a long way down, and worth every hour of it.
Sixty metres of ice cracking off a wall into grey water, a channel full of sea lions and cormorants, and a national park where the road simply stops. The bottom of Argentina fills earliest and books earliest.
Salta and Jujuy: seven colours of rock, then a white salt floor.
The Quebrada de Humahuaca runs north out of Salta past hillsides banded like a geology diagram, and the road over the pass drops onto the Salinas Grandes, a salt flat you walk out onto. Altitude is the only catch: the pass tops four thousand metres and the coca tea is not a gimmick.
Every day out from Salta →
What an Argentine day out actually costs, top to bottom.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best Argentine days come in under the price of dinner in Palermo.
Barrio walks, the cemetery, stadium tickets and the half-day cellar runs out of Mendoza.
The full-day standards: the glacier boardwalks, both sides of the falls, the Salinas Grandes run, a day in the Uco Valley.
Ice trekking on the glacier, private guides, the flight over the falls and the long Patagonian days.
- 1Gaucho and Ranch Day Tourfrom $168
- 2Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruisefrom $396
- 3Penguin Watching Tour by Catamaranfrom $180
Mendoza: malbec at a thousand metres, with Aconcagua on the skyline.
Everything in Mendoza →
Three bodegas and an olive press in an afternoon, or a whole day climbing the Andes road towards the Chilean border. The cellars are cheap by any standard. The mountain day is the one people talk about afterwards.
Three bodegas, or one and a long lunch
The standard run visits three wineries and an olive-oil press with a tasting at each. The slower version swaps the third cellar for a set lunch in the vines, which is where the afternoon ends up anyway.
The Andes road under Aconcagua
West out of the city on Route 7 past the Inca bridge and the Aconcagua viewpoint, close enough to the Chilean border to see the queue of lorries. Long day, high road, and cold at the top whatever the forecast in town said.
Horses first, then the coals
Out to a finca in the foothills, an hour or two in the saddle while the light goes orange on the range, then beef over a fire and a drive back in the dark. No riding experience assumed.
Three things that only happen in Argentina.
Glaciers, grills and dancing exist everywhere. A wall of ice that advances on you, a whole day built round one fire, and a dance invented in a port two kilometres from where you will watch it do not.
The Perito Moreno Glacier
Nearly every glacier on earth is retreating. This one advances, roughly two metres a day, until the snout runs into the far shore and dams the arm of the lake behind it. The water builds up, undercuts the ice and eventually brings the bridge down. Boardwalks face the wall from three heights, and the sound of a collapse reaches you about a second after the ice does.
- 1Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,586 reviews
- 2Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 805 reviews
- 3Perito Moreno Glacier Guided Full-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 155 reviews
The Estancia Asado
An hour out of Buenos Aires the city stops dead and the pampas start. A day at an estancia runs on its own clock: horses in the morning, empanadas out of a clay oven, then beef over coals for as long as the coals need, and folk dancing while everyone works out who is driving back.
- 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
Tango in Buenos Aires
Tango came out of the port barrios of La Boca and San Telmo and spent a century becoming respectable. It now splits two ways: the big dinner shows with an orchestra and a cast, and the milongas where ordinary porteños dance until four in the morning. Both are bookable, and they are not the same evening.
- 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
Four Argentine bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on daily caps, short timetables and a fixture list that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and CruiseThe ice walk runs to a daily cap and an upper age limit, and the operator wants your boot size before you arrive. First Patagonian booking to disappear.
- 02Teatro Colón Guided TourThe tour runs between rehearsals inside a working opera house, on a fixed daily schedule with a set group size. On performance days it does not run at all.
- 03National Park & Train of the End of the World TourThe narrow-gauge train keeps a short timetable that shrinks again in winter, and the carriages are small. It sells by departure, not by day.
- 04Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & StadiumLa Bombonera closes to visitors around fixtures, and the fixture list moves. Check the match before you fix the rest of the week.
When Patagonia shuts, the Argentine north is at its best.
The country runs three and a half thousand kilometres from the tropics to the Beagle Channel, so it never has one season. Between May and September the glacier boats thin out, the Ushuaia treks close and the southern wind gets serious. That is exactly when Salta, Iguazú and Buenos Aires are dry, mild and half empty.
Iguazú: Argentina walks you into it, Brazil shows you all of it.
The falls sit on the border and the two sides do different jobs. The Argentine catwalks take you out over the Garganta del Diablo and close enough to be soaked through; the Brazilian side gives you the whole panorama from across the gorge. Most people do both on separate days, and it is the boat underneath that they talk about afterwards.
By place, from the tropics downwards
By kind of day: ice, vines, water or a stage
Buenos Aires, Iguazú, Salta, Mendoza, then as far south as the days allow.
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