16-Day Argentina & Uruguay: Gauchos, Wine & Wonders

Day 1 – Welcome to Buenos Aires! 

Get a warm South American welcome as you meet our local team at the airport and head to your hotel to get comfy for the next three nights.

Then jump right into the buzz of this Argentine city, known by resident porteños as BA, or simply ‘The Capital,’ with a welcome cocktail and dinner in a garden restaurant close to your hotel – a fun start to getting to know your fellow Patchies.

Accommodation: Argenta Tower Hotel or similar, Buenos Aires
Included: Welcome cocktail and Dinner

Day 2 – Explore Buenos Aires

You can’t come all this way and not hear about the trailblazing women of Argentina, so that’s exactly how you’ll start today. Skip the mental 16-lane Avenida 9 de Julio – the world’s widest street. Instead, you Patchies will hop on a bike and cruise around.

Pedal easily around the city’s central neighbourhoods taking in the sights, including the ornate Basilica of the Blessed Sacrament – which can be easily missed if you don’t know where to look – and the ultra-modern Woman’s Bridge at the Puerto Madero Waterfront. You’ll also get to know Eva Peron at her bronze statue on Avenida del Libertador.

Around midday head to the La Boca neighbourhood for a guided walk of its brightly-painted clapboard buildings, first built by new immigrants in the nineteenth century. Tuck into a three-course lunch at El Gran Paraíso, a famed steakhouse serving up the likes of asado banderita (roast prime ribs) and pollo grillado a las brasas (charcoal-grilled chicken).

The afternoon is yours to relax, or explore more of BA if you have itchy feet.

Accommodation: Argenta Tower Hotel or similar, Buenos Aires
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 3 – Northern Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires. People often call it the ‘Paris of South America’ and after strolling around Retiro, Recoleta and Palermo, you’ll see why. French-style mansions everywhere, fancy shops, wide boulevards (hello, Paris) and parks so perfect they don’t look real.

You’ll also visit the tomb of Eva Peron and other famous Argentines at Recoleta Cemetery. Pretty moving stuff actually. Grab lunch somewhere local with your Patchie tribe.

Then the afternoon’s yours to do whatever takes your fancy in Buenos Aires. It’s only day three, and you’re already wandering around like a local.

Accommodation: Argenta Tower Hotel or similar, Buenos Aires
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 4 – Jujuy and Purmamarca

It’s a quick flight this morning as you head to San Salvador de Jujuy, although you’ll soon be calling it Jujuy just like the locals do. Though you wouldn’t know it today – from a sneak peek at the cityscape before lunch – Jujuy was a crossroads for Incan culture. These days it’s a gateway to Quebrada de Humahuaca, a rainbow-coloured landscape so magical UNESCO put it on its list. 

But before you step through that gate, how about lunch? With your eyes resting on the green of the countryside, dig into a surprising menu that pays tribute to the culture and biodiversity of the area – only in Italian. 

By afternoon you’re heading to Purmamarca, a village of adobe (mud brick) homes, a 17th-century historic church and a thriving craft market. Pull your eyes away from the alpaca wear and mate mugs and you’ll see Cerro de los Siete Colores – the Hill of Seven Colours – which looks pretty much what it sounds like, only way more impressive.

Accommodation: El Manantial del Silencio or similar, Purmamarca
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 5 – Pucará de Tilcara and Vineyard Cooking 

While the next few nights see you returning to Purmamarca, this morning you’ll leave the village for Pucará de Tilcara archaeological site, a pre-Hispanic settlement in the Humahuaca Gorge occupied for eight centuries at a time when Europe was medieval.

As you stroll among its ancient thoroughfares you’ll start to get a feel for what it might have been like to live here. Peek into the recreated ruins of a home, stand on a public square and watch the scene come alive around you. 

Now that you’ve worked up an appetite, it’s time to sample some of the region’s produce with a tour of a local vineyard, wine tasting and cooking class. Laura, a local chef, will help you prepare classics such as her award-winning empanadas. Who’s recreating this recipe back home?

Accommodation: El Manantial del Silencio or similar, Purmamarca
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 6 – Time Travel in Hornaditas and Hornocal

It’s time to connect even further with the region’s indigenous Andean culture. At Hornaditas, you’ll join the Lamas family as they share their age-old traditional loom weaving (and cooking) techniques. Since there’s no Andean culture without the Andes Mountains, you’ll head to the hills next. A two-hour hike along a sometimes tricky mountain trail takes you to the Homauaca archaeological site, home to ancient cave paintings.

With the weather on your side, you’ll carry on to Hornocal. Otherwise known as the Hill of 14 Colours, it almost puts the Cerro de los Siete Colores to shame! Dating back some 75 million years – to the time of the dinosaurs – you’ll see how the mountain features an artist’s palette of colours, from greens and yellows to whites and reds.

Accommodation: El Manantial del Silencio  or similar, Purmamarca
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 7 – Salinas Grandes

Today’s the day that might outshine your first six days in Argentina. You’ll hit the road nice and early to give you as much time as possible at the Salinas Grandes, and even the way there is a stunner. 

But Salinas Grandes would be worth the journey even without the dramatic roadway. Sat at an elevation of 3,450 metres, the sky seems close enough to touch, while 12,000 square kilometres of salt flats spread out before you, forming an otherworldly, snow-white sight so large that it bends the mind’s ideas of scale and distance.

That’s not the only reason to have your camera at the ready today. The day continues with the drive towards the city of Salta, known for its grand colonial-era buildings. Along the way, you’ll grab lunch in the small town of San Antonio de los Cobres, another high-altitude townscape, dominated by buildings made with traditional techniques such as adobe bricks and cane stick roofs.

Accommodation: Design Suites Salta  or similar, Salta
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 8 – Traditional Salta

Halfway through your Patch adventure, today’s a chance to pause, with no activities planned until later. Relax in the hotel, or grab a few Patchie friends and venture out for lunch until the late afternoon, when you’ll set out to explore Salta on your guided walk.

Cross these off your bucket list. Wander the summer village of San Lorenzo on the city’s outskirts, take in panoramic views from the hill of San Bernardo, pay your respects at the Güemes Monument – honouring the Argentine independence hero who fell in battle at this spot in 1821 – and lose a couple of hours in the History Museum of the North, where the pre-Hispanic and pre-independence story of this remarkable country really comes alive.

This evening, enjoy a dinner of regional dishes and wines together with a folkloric show of live musicians and colourfully-clad dancers at a local peña – venues used to celebrate music, dance, food and traditions of the region. You’re getting to the soul of Salta, just like the locals do!

Accommodation: Design Suites Salta or similar, Salta
Included: Breakfast and Dinner

Day 9 – Horseback Riding at Chicoana

The little girl in you is about to have all her childhood dreams come true! Head to the rural town of Chicoana, where you’ll get to experience life as a gaucho – or South American cowboy.

Jump onto the back of a horse at an estancia (ranch) and spend the day in the countryside. You and your Patchies will trek along a range of trails, through diverse landscapes of open fields and scenic river valleys. It’s cameras out for this one!

With plenty of stops to learn more about the region’s history from your local guide, the day includes an authentic asado barbecue lunch and an afternoon tea, too.

Back in Salta, pop in at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology to come face-to-face with the Children of Llullaillaco. These mummies, thought to have been children sacrificed in an Incan ritual around 500 years ago, have been preserved down to the detail for a fascinating – if sobering – experience. What a day!

Accommodation: Design Suites Salta or similar, Salta
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 10 – Puerto Iguazú Mate Ceremony

A leisurely morning gives you time to tick off any final sights you’d like to revisit on your own in Salta before catching a flight to Puerto Iguazú in the far northeast, close to Argentina’s borders with Brazil and Paraguay.

Though you may have already seen people enjoying the more-than-a-drink mate (pronounced ma-tey) elsewhere in Argentina, you’re now coming to the place where it was born. What better way to discover its importance to Argentine culture than a private mate preparation ceremony? Well, probably one happening at sunset! 

Accommodation: Village Cataratas or similar, Puerto Iguazú
Included: Breakfast and Dinner

WHAT IS MATE?

A highly-caffeinated hot drink made from steeping local yerba mate leaves in hot water, mate is a little like tea. It is traditionally drunk through a metal straw known as a bombilla with a sieve at the end and served in a ‘cup’ made from a carved-out calabash gourd, also called a mate.

First drunk by the Guarani and Tupi indigenous peoples, today mate is usually drunk at gatherings such as family meet-ups, with the same bombilla and mate gourd shared by everyone in the group, symbolising welcome, friendship, trust and equality. Sounds like something Patchies would feel right at home with!

Day 11 – Iguazú Falls

Travel the short distance to one of South America’s foremost natural wonders – Iguazú Falls. A national park of the same name protects the Argentine side of the falls and today you’ll get to explore them yourself.

It’s an irresistible entrance to the park as you hop on an open-air jungle train and dive in under the forest cover. Then, a well-used and easy trail brings you to the Devil’s Throat, where the waters of the Iguazú River thunder 80 metres onto the rocks below. You’ll likely be too amazed to worry about getting wet!

There’s time for all-angles views of the falls from the Upper and Lower Circuit trails, and when your tummy begins to rumble, lunch at a restaurant inside the national park will be waiting. With the rest of the day unscheduled, will you spend it lounging by the pool or sending just one more picture of the falls to friends back home?

Accommodation: Village Cataratas or similar, Puerto Iguazú 
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 12 – Buenos Aires Barbecue

Most of today is about getting you from Puerto Iguazú to Buenos Aires – your launch point for reaching Uruguay. But first, there’ll be no dull moments to be had in the big city!

Instead, join locals Betty and Marcelo for an asado barbie prepped as it would be for friends and family (today, that’s you). You’ll get to see exactly what goes into creating Argentina’s national dish, from picking the choicest cuts of meat, to knowing exactly when they should be taken off the heat of the wood-fired parrilla (grill). Day 12 in Argentina and by now you can probably write the guidebook yourself! 

Accommodation: Argenta Tower Hotel or similar, Buenos Aires
Included: Breakfast and Dinner

Day 13 – Welcome to Uruguay!

Brave the waters again today to sail north across the mouth of the River Plata to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay – a ferry journey of just over an hour but into a whole new country.

This cobblestoned, colourpacked architectural dream of a port city is filled to the brim with atmosphere, and you’ll learn all about it on a guided walk around the Real de San Carlos area. Did you know it was founded by the Portuguese, not the Spanish?

Visit the historic San Benito Chapel and bullring cultural centre (thankfully no longer used for its original purpose) before heading to the heart of the city’s UNESCO-enshrined Historic Quarter. Here you’ll see many of the city’s oldest structures, including a city gate complete with wooden drawbridge and all-important whitewashed lighthouse, before the rest of the day beckons, unplanned and full of go-with-the-flow possibility.

Accommodation: Posada Don Antonio or similar, Colonia del Sacramento 
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 14 – Magical Montevideo

You might want to leave some of the breakfast buffet alone today since you’re heading to Honegger Cheese first thing for a special encounter. Laura Honegger (yes, the owner herself!)  will let you in on the cheese-making process, taking influence from Honneger’s Swiss ancestors, before providing samples of her heart-shaped cheeses for you to try.

With a tummy full of cheese, you’re ready to get on the road to Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. Before you get there, use what you’ve learned so far to compare and contrast Argentine and Uruguayan cuisine with lunch en route.

Once you’ve had some time to rest in your room, your love affair with Montevideo begins. You’ll visit Independence Square, the Agricultural Market and Solís Theatre among other attractions, with your local guide ready to share their insider knowledge. Stay close and you may learn a secret or two, too.

Accommodation: Own Montevideo Hotel or similar, Montevideo 
Included: Breakfast and Lunch

Day 15 – Bracco Bosca Winery

After two weeks in Argentina and Uruguay, we probably don’t need to tell you that both countries are formidable wine producers. Today, dive in deep at Bracco Bosca Winery, a fifth-generation, family-run vineyard in the Laguna del Cisne protected area.

Here you’ll see the vines and equipment that turns the grapes into small batches of certified, sustainable wines. But no need to worry about a parched throat – lunch will be a multi-course feast perfectly paired with some of their most recent vintages.

Since there’s no better way to wrap up a Patchie adventure than with celebration, your feast continues in the evening at a cosy restaurant that mixes Creole dishes with Uruguayan wines – and live tango. Tango is actually the perfect way to tie these two countries – and your trip – together.  The dance form is recognised as a shared cultural heritage for both Argentina and Uruguay. To the rhythm of the music, it’s one last night of belly-laughs with your Patchie friends.

Accommodation: Own Montevideo Hotel or similar, Montevideo
Included: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Day 16 – Farewell Friends!

It may be tough to rise this morning, but if that’s the wine’s doing or your reluctance at leaving no one can say. Make sure all your souvenirs are carefully packed away – along with your fellow Patchies’ contact details – before you say a fond farewell to both them and the countries that have been your home for the past 16 days. As you’re whisked off to the airport, take one last look out at the River Plata, glittering in the sunlight. It’s not goodbye forever, it’s Hasta la próxima – until we meet again!

Included: Breakfast