Argentina is a very long country. Book it in the right order.
Which Perito Moreno day puts you on the boat. What a tango show costs once the dinner is added. Reviews of every tour you can book in Argentina.
A glacier, a tango hall, the falls, and a long Malbec lunch.
Most first trips to Argentina hang off these four. What each costs, how long it takes, and what the people who went say about it.
01The one everybody comes forEl Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat CruiseThe balconies face the ice wall and you wait for it to calve. Add the boat if you want it close enough to hear.
02The night outBuenos Aires: Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional DinnerA full orchestra, a floor show and a menu you can skip. Book the show alone if you would rather eat in Palermo afterwards.
03Both sides in a dayFoz do Iguaçu: Brazil/Argentina Sides Iguazu Falls Day TourThe Brazilian side gives you the panorama, the Argentine side puts you over the top of it. This one does both before dinner.
04The half day that worksMendoza: Half-Day Wine Tour with TastingsThree tastings and lunch, back in Mendoza by late afternoon. The full-day version costs twice as much for one more cellar.
Argentina works as a set of bases, not one long trip.
A capital that eats late, a wine city under the Andes, a lake town, a salt-and-ochre north, the falls on the Brazilian border, and three ways into Patagonia. Pick the bases first and the days fill themselves in.
Buenos Aires eats at ten and dances after midnight.
The tango question is really three questions: the show on its own, the show with the dinner, or the meat and nothing else. Here is what each one costs to walk into.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Tango Porteño: The Best Tango Night in Buenos Aires
The show on its ownA proper orchestra and a floor, no menu attached.
Dinner and the showSit down at eight, curtain at ten, courses in between.
The parrillaNine courses of Argentine beef and a sommelier who means it.
Somebody else picksEmpanada crawls, closed-door kitchens, wine bars in Palermo.
All 142 nights out in Buenos Aires →
Perito Moreno, Piazzolla, Iguazú: the ones that never stop selling.
Every Argentine tour we have reviewed →A glacier balcony, a red bus, a tango orchestra and a boat under the falls. These carry more travellers than anything else Argentina sells.
1
El Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruise
See Perito Moreno Glacier from boardwalks and an optional boat cruise on an 8-hour El Calafate day trip with bilingual guides.
From · $80
Read our review →
2
Buenos Aires: Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner
from $48
3
Buenos Aires: City Highlights Guided Tour with Transfer
from $38
4
Buenos Aires: La Boca Guided Walking Tour in English
from $13
5
Foz do Iguaçu: Brazil/Argentina Sides Iguazu Falls Day Tour
from $49
6
Buenos Aires: La Recoleta Cemetery Guided Tour in English
from $13
7
Buenos Aires: Tango Show at Tango Porteño & Optional Dinner
from $40
8
From El Calafate: Full-Day Tour to El Chaltén
from $130
Southern Patagonia: a glacier, a channel, and a gulf full of whales.
Three bases, three completely different days. El Calafate is the ice. Ushuaia is the water and the end of the road. Puerto Madryn is the wildlife coast, and the only one with a season you have to plan around.
A tip-based walk or a private Andes day: Argentina by price.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs a head. Buenos Aires in particular is a city where a very good guided morning costs less than the coffee afterwards.
Free-walk tips, city walks, museum and stadium tickets, the short boat out into the Tigre delta.
The standard full day: Perito Moreno with the balconies, both sides of Iguazú, a Mendoza cellar run, the Beagle Channel.
Ice trekking with crampons, the whale boats, gaucho days on an estancia, and private cars with a driver who waits.
Three things Argentina has that nowhere else does.
Mountains and vineyards are everywhere. A glacier you can walk onto in trainers-and-crampons, a dance invented in one city’s port district, and a colony of half a million penguins are not.
The Perito Moreno Glacier
Almost every glacier on earth is retreating. This one is not, and every few years it grows far enough across the channel to dam Lago Argentino, until the water builds up behind the ice and blows the front out in an arch. The rest of the time it simply calves, all day, with a noise like a rifle going off in a canyon. Two ways to see it: the steel balconies opposite the face, or crampons and an hour on top of it.
- 1El Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier & Optional Boat Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,586 reviews
- 2El Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 805 reviews
- 3Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier Guided Full-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 155 reviews
A Buenos Aires Tango Hall
Tango came out of the immigrant boarding houses around the docks in the 1880s and spent forty years being disreputable before Paris made it respectable enough to bring home. The show version is a stage production with an orchestra, a singer and a bandoneón; the milonga version is a room full of locals dancing badly and happily until four in the morning. The halls sell both, and the tourist one is honestly the better first night.
- 1Buenos Aires: Piazzolla Tango Show with Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 2,122 reviews
- 2Buenos Aires: Tango Show at Tango Porteño & Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 981 reviews
- 3Buenos Aires: Madero Tango Show with Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 748 reviews
The Patagonian Penguin Coast
Magellanic penguins come ashore on the Chubut coast every September to dig burrows in the scrub, and by January the colony at Punta Tombo is one of the largest anywhere. Further south, off Ushuaia, a much smaller island in the Beagle Channel takes a handful of boats a day and is the only place in Argentina where you can walk among them. Both run to a season, and both close it in April.
- 1Ushuaia: Penguin Watching Tour by Catamaran★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 439 reviews
- 2Ushuaia: Catamaran Sailing to Penguin Island★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 436 reviews
- 3Ushuaia: Beagle Channel and Penguin Island★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 318 reviews
Four Argentine bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four cannot: they run on seasons, river levels, fixture lists and a cap on how many people are allowed on the ice.
- 01El Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and CruiseThe walk onto the ice is capped by group size and by age, and the trekking permits go long before the balcony tickets do.
- 02Valdes Peninsula: Full Day with Whale WatchingSouthern right whales are only in the gulfs from roughly June to December. Outside that window the boats simply do not sail.
- 03Buenos Aires: Tickets to Boca Juniors Museum & StadiumFixtures move by a day or two at short notice, and the stadium closes to visitors whenever a match is on.
- 04Foz do Iguaçu: Brazil/Argentina Sides Iguazu Falls Day TourThe walkway out over the Devil’s Throat closes when the river runs high, and after heavy rain upstream it can stay shut for days.
Buenos Aires to Ushuaia is a three-and-a-half hour flight.
Argentina is the eighth largest country on earth and the good parts sit at opposite ends of it. If the week has one spare day and no spare flight left in it, that day goes to the delta, the pampas, or a very long lunch — all of which start and finish in the capital.
Beef, Malbec, and a pastry with more caramel in it than pastry.
Lunch is late, dinner is later, and the good parrilla will not rush you. Book the empanada walk for the morning, the cellar for the afternoon, and leave the evening completely alone.
By base — capital, wine country, Patagonia
By kind of day — a hall, a boat, a vineyard, a glacier
North to the falls, west to the vines, then all the way south.
The reviews that went up last.
More of the newest reviews →
Los Glaciares National Park and Perito Moreno Glacier Tour
Read our review →
Rafting experience on the Rio de las Vueltas in Patagonia
Read our review →
El Calafate: Perito Moreno Glacier, Boat Cruise & Glaciarium
Read our review →
Argentinian Empanadas Cooking Experience in Palermo, Bs As
Read our review →
Iguazu Falls Private Tour with Optional Airfare from Buenos Aires
Read our review →
Discover Buenos Aires: Private Tour with Your Expert Local Guide
Read our review →
Cacheuta Hot Springs Park + Intermediate Rafting
Read our review →
Experience The Essence of Buenos Aires in San Telmo
Read our review →
Puerto Iguazu: Argentine Falls & Great Adventure Boat
Read our review →
