A road trip through Argentina reveals the country’s wild beauty at its best
On Buenos Aires’ Plaza del Congreso, a monument informed me I was at Kilómetro Zero – the point from which all the nation’s roads are measured. Argentina is hyper-centralised; everything starts and ends at Buenos Aires, and the further away you travel from the epicentre the more you leave behind modernity, power, wealth, progress.
As a reward, you are gifted ever-grander landscapes, extraordinary wildlife, lovely people and a genuine sense of adventure.
The Ruta 9 – the main highway to the north west – connects the capital to the Pampas and the Andes and, eventually, Bolivia. It follows, quite closely, the Camino Real that the Spanish established to traffic mules and slaves to their silver mines. This is the road that effectively built Argentina – before it was even named.
Whether you drive, as I did, or take buses and trains (a long-distance rail service still operates to Tucumán), you get to see the cultural and topographical diversity of this huge country, and get a peek into the stories and conflicts that have defined its restive history.
Before setting off, I visited some of my favourite restaurants, cafés and museums. I lived in Buenos Aires for a decade up to 2001 and go back almost every year. Where I eat and drink over the years changes; fashion and faddism is rife. For lunch, I heartily recommend Rodi Bar, a timeless corner restaurant where you can always score a great steak or pasta dish, a half bottle of meaty Malbec, and superb service.
All Buenos Aires’ major public galleries are great – the Museo Moderno is more daring and stimulating than London’s Tate Modern. I also make a stop at the ESMA, the former Naval School turned Museum of Memory and Human Rights. It is Argentina’s newest Unesco World Heritage Site, created in 2023 as a permanent memorial to the thousands of disappeared and other victims of the 1976-93 dictatorship.
I left the city using a motorway that slices between a massive shanty town – the Villa 31 – and the busy city airport. It’s a striking metaphor for the country. The highway widened as I motored through the suburbs, and then dwindled to two lanes as it entered the Pampas.
Roadside life is always boisterous in Latin America, townships tending to cluster on the main arteries. I saw gauchos coming into towns in beat-up pickups to get tools and fuel, old-timers chatting on the plazas, schoolchildren in lab coats and teens knocking footballs around bare patches of grass.
The Pampas’ chief species is the cow, but in some areas, I spotted pink spoonbills and large maguari storks, wading in silvery lagoons formed by seasonal rains.
On previous journeys, I’ve spent the night at estancias. Places like La Bamba de Areco and La Bandada are former ranches that have been converted into luxurious hotels. But on this occasion I drove on, my mission to ogle some overlooked landmarks I’d been meaning to visit for ages. In the otherwise unprepossessing Pampas towns of Juan Bautista Alberdi and Alberti are buildings by the brilliant Italo-Argentinian architect Francisco Salamone.
He built more than sixty municipal structures mainly for rural towns, exploiting the big skies to set off his clean lines and bright hues, and a style that combines Art Deco with Futurism; the effect is dramatic, especially out here in the agricultural heartlands, where country houses and barns dominate.
It’s a longish haul though numberless fields before I arrived as dusk gathered in Córdoba, Argentina’s second city. The next morning, I explored another Unesco site – the Jesuit Block and Estancias. The former, in the centre of the city, consists of a 17th century church, the Jesuit priests’ residential quarters and Argentina’s oldest university. The most extraordinary room is the library full of theological and philosophical works, devotional books and beautifully illustrated scientific tomes.
Out in the suburbs are five estancias that the Jesuits established to fund their mission, educate native peoples and, frankly, compete commercially with the colonists. They were successful, as is obvious from the scale and sophistication of the two estancias I visited – Santa Catalina and Jesús María; the latter lies off the Ruta 9. The Jesuits were expelled in 1767, having become too powerful for the secular land-grabbing barons to tolerate.
After Córdoba, the landscapes get better and better with every 100 miles. The highway crosses the edge of the vast Ambargasta salt lake and the hot pools of the Termas de Rio Hondo, and gradually the craggy heights of the Andes heave into view. I stopped in the city of Tucumán, where Independence from Spain was declared in 1816.
From here to Salta, rather than speed along the main road, I used back roads so that I could take in the archaeological site of Quilmes, arrayed on a steep hill where a native settlement was cruelly besieged by conquering Spaniards, and Cafayate, an idyllic oasis town known for its vineyards.
From there, the Ruta 40 took me through the Calchaqui Valleys; inhabited for 12,000 years, first by hunter-gatherers and then by communities that engaged in agriculture and metallurgy, they eventually were drawn into the Inca Empire’s sphere of influence.
The mountains on either side of me were spectacular. Earthy greenish and clay-coloured hues occasionally broken up to expose raw red rock or shimmering white. Giant candelabra cactuses reared up along the roadside. Tiny baroque chapels and old-world wineries dotted the foothills. I was near the tropics in midsummer, but the Nevado de Cachi massif, the highest in the region, was splashed with snow. I saw guanacos grazing on the knolls overlooking the road and, high above, lots of condors.
In the town of Cachi, I enjoyed empanadas – the best ones in Argentina are found in the north west – before driving slowly – it is all too spectacular to rush – the final furlongs to Salta. The land finally opened up into a wide valley. It was here mules grazed before the final push on to the high, bare Andean Altiplano, where water and grass are scarcer. I parked on the plaza and got myself a cold beer.
A thousand miles in three days. Easy, really. It would take muleteers more than a year, allowing for overwintering. The road north, to the Bolivian border, is also a famous drive, and one I’ll save for next time.
How to do it
Journey Latin America (020 3553 9647) offers holidays to all of Latin America including Argentina. A 13-day self-drive holiday in Argentina starting in Buenos Aires and ending in Salta starts from £3,650 per person.
The price includes accommodation on a B&B basis, including a night in Estancia La Bamba, hire car, a domestic flight from Salta back to Buenos Aires, transfers and guided excursions. International flights are extra. Budget around £1,000 for flights from the UK to Argentina with British Airways via Heathrow.
