Argentina Geography, Climate & Nature

Argentina is the second-largest country in South America, stretching an enormous 3,700 kilometers from the subtropical north to Tierra del Fuego near Antarctica.

The Andes mountains run the length of the country's western border, home to Aconcagua, the tallest peak in the Americas, while the vast, fertile Pampas grasslands dominate the center.

The far south, Patagonia, is defined by dramatic granite peaks and glaciers, while the subtropical Northeast is home to Iguazu Falls, one of the world's largest waterfall systems.

Argentina's enormous north-south length gives it nearly every climate zone in one country. The Northeast, including Iguazu Falls, is subtropical, while the central Pampas around Buenos Aires have a temperate climate with clear seasons.

The Andean Northwest is high and arid, while Cuyo (Mendoza) has a dry, semi-desert climate that, combined with irrigation from Andean snowmelt, makes it ideal wine country.

Patagonia, in the far south, is cool to cold year-round and famously windy, with weather that can shift dramatically within a single day.

Argentina stretches from the subtropics to the edge of Antarctica, and that span produces an unusually complete set of habitats inside one country: subtropical Atlantic forest in Misiones, the dry Gran Chaco, the Pampas grassland, the Andean puna and altiplano, Patagonian steppe, and the southern beech forest and glaciers of Tierra del Fuego. The climate is mostly temperate, with an arid zone in southeast Patagonia and a subantarctic climate in the southwest.

The Pampas is the most transformed and the least appreciated. It was one of the world's great temperate grasslands and is now one of its most productive farming regions, which means the habitat a visitor sees there is agricultural and the remnant grassland is confined to fragments and reserves. Conversely, Misiones' Atlantic forest survives in Argentina better than in the neighbouring countries, which is why Iguazú is surrounded by forest rather than by farmland.

The marine and coastal systems on the Patagonian Atlantic are the internationally significant ones. Valdés Peninsula was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, and the waters beside it are the most important breeding ground for southern right whales in the world -- a superlative rather than a strong claim.

Argentine wildlife divides by region as sharply as its landscapes. Patagonia is the reliable one: guanaco and rhea on the steppe, Andean condor over the cordillera, and the waters off the Valdés Peninsula, which hold the most important breeding ground for southern right whales in the world. Puma are present in genuine numbers in the southern parks and are seen more often than visitors expect.

The north holds the harder-won animals. The Iberá wetlands in Corrientes were once threatened by poaching, cattle ranching and forestry, and a rewilding initiative has since re-introduced several species there, the jaguar among them -- one of the more ambitious such programmes anywhere, and the reason Iberá now appears on itineraries at all. The Gran Chaco holds species almost nobody sees, and the Andean northwest holds vicuña, flamingos on high-altitude salt lakes, and the condor again.

Practically, Argentina rewards choosing one region and its season. Whales are winter and spring, penguins are spring and summer, and the northern wetlands are best when the water is low and animals concentrate.