Because I had been staying at the Llao Llao Hotel a single of Argentina’s premier accommodations, I had been ushered to a particular arrivals hang whose rough-hewn style indicated a 1940’s Artist motion picture set. Shortly I’d been boosting by way of Bariloche, proceeding toward the vista so surreal this could have been hand crafted by Magritte-towering hills of sheer granitic crowned by glistening snow. Would 1 peak truly seem like an eagle’s head?The highway wound past luxe vacation homes hidden within the woods alongside LK Nahuel Huapi, the biggest of the region’s lakes, its cobalt blue waters whipped to a froth from the Andean winds. Then the Llao Llao swung into view-a huge, rustic, neo-Helvetian pile on a hilltop, with Nahuel Huapi on a single side plus a more compact lake around the other. A little log chapel sat with woods as a backdrop. Roses climbed the rail fence along the driveway.

The Llao Llao is not just a resort; it’s the centerpiece of your region, the key for the elaborate fantasy that informed the area’s development. Throughout the 1930’s, Argentina’s military government created two contiguous nationwide parks that extend for 160 miles alongside the rugged Chilean border; the Llao Llao was their capstone. Parks and hotels alike were the brainchildren of Ezequiel and Alejandro Bustillo, brothers who’d fallen beneath the spell of “el Sur,” the huge and trackless Patagonian wilderness that Argentina’s army had wrested through the natives only a half-century earlier. Ezequiel was the visionary bureaucrat, head of the Nationwide Park Service and central for the creation of its 1st park, Nahuel Huapi. Alejandro was the architect who transformed these craggy surroundings into stone-and-wood stage sets. In their hands, the Patagonian of the nomadic Mapuche and Tehuelche nations became a romantic Alpine fantasia. Picture a band of gauchos singing “Edelweiss” from the campfire and you’ve got the general thought.

Certainly the Llao Llao is nothing if not operatic. Its steeply pitched roofs, massive stone chimneys, and reddish log walls-made through the coihue tree, indigenous towards the local Andean forests-are well suited to the overwrought landscape. Inside, the deep-red log paneling is placed away by cascading deer-antler chandeliers, chairs upholstered in exotic skins, and enough stuffed birds and fish to form a regional museum of fauna. A grand staircase leads to El Asador the double-height grill room, where beef and trout and succulent Patagonian lamb are served hot in the coals at tables overlooking the lake. But the actual excitement is outdoors. Just beyond the helipad can be a dock from which motor launches leave for tours of LK Nahuel Huapi. Towards the south a single highway roughly follows the continental divide into Nahuel Huapi National Park, providing access to the mountains that, from here, seem so impenetrable.

I traveled this road the next day, turning off the two-lane blacktop at Lake Mascardi onto a narrow gravel road that winds for 30 miles towards the base of Mount Tronador, at 11,660 ft the monarch of your park. Mascardi can be a narrow lk wedged tightly in to the mountains; at its far finish, halfway down the gravel highway, a series of trails branch into the wild. You’ll be able to follow these for days, trekking from valley to crest and back once more, sleeping in crude shelters or pitching your own tent. I had one thing a bit a lot more modest in thoughts: a short uphill hike to the Cascada de los Csares, a waterfall on a stream that flows into LK Mascardi from a much more compact lk nestled in a fold about a thousand feet higher.

I identified the path near the turnoff for the Hotel Tronador, a rustic lodge that’s been run through the identical loved ones given that 1929. It had rained every evening for days-soaking downpours borne on dark clouds from the Pacific-but so dense was the black, loamy earth that mud was barely an issue. The path cut through dense stands of bamboo-like trees on its way up the mountainside. Magnificent coihue trees supplied shade in the sun, their tiny green leaves sparkling in horizontal sheaves. I could really feel a light breeze to the trail, but overhead the wind whistled by means of the branches so loudly that I didn’t hear the waterfalls till I used to be practically upon them. Then, suddenly, I had been in the edge of a cliff, face-to-face with 230 toes of cascading snowmelt.

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