Travel guide to the Cuyo

Cuyo provinces

The Cuyo comprises the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, San Luis, and La Rioja. The largest city is Mendoza, with a total population of around 1 million inhabitants, located 1,060km (659 miles) due west of Buenos Aires.

Where to go

Argentina’s west is not as wild as it used to be. Once a precarious frontier town nervously awaiting the next earthquake, Mendoza, the region’s largest city, has grown into a thriving, prosperous metropolis. Melt water from glaciers high up in the Andes feeds rivers that cut through the dry plains below; they in turn feed the orchards and vineyards that have made Mendoza and, to a lesser extent, San Juan, the country’s most important fruit- and wine-producing regions. However, these oases are the exception, not the rule. In places like La Rioja’s Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), where the rivers dried up millions of years ago, nothing lives and nothing stirs – except for the wind chipping away at the sandstone cliffs. In these areas you are more likely to see a paleontologist than a viticulturist: Cuyo is a mecca for dinosaur hunters.  

What to do

In terms of tourism, the region attracts both adventurers and hedonists. For the former there are white-water rafting excursions on turbulent stretches of snowmelt river, treks in the Andean foothills, wind-kart rides on ancient, long-dried-up lake beds, and leaps into thin air on a paraglider. Climbers come from across the globe to lock horns with Mt Aconcagua – at 6,960 meters (22,841ft) the highest peak outside the Himalayas. 

For hedonists the attractions of the Cuyo (and Mendoza in particular) can be summed up in one word: wine. The receptiveness of the province’s many wineries to tourism has increased in proportion with the fame of their wines. It is now possible to spend day after languid day hopping from one Mendoza bodega to the other, tasting the latest vintage and touring the facilities. 

Places to visit in the Cuyo

Mendoza city

While Mendoza is nothing like the metropolis that is Buenos Aires, it has its own charms, and a wealth of cultural activity. Transplanted residents from the capital boast a happy conversion to the more relaxed pace of Mendoza. Read more about Mendoza city...

Mendoza's bodegas

Scattered across the fertile plains and valleys around Mendoza are hundreds of wineries, ranging from small family operations to huge foreign-owned booze factories. All of this cultivation is made possible through an extensive network of irrigation channels, originally laid in pre-Columbian times and extended during the colonial era. The area is blessed with a heady combination of plentiful water, sandy soil, a dry climate, and year-round sunshine, which makes for enormous grape yields.

Wine tours can be arranged through a specialist agency, but a more pleasant way to make the rounds is by buying a map, renting a car (or a bicycle), and finding them yourself. This provides the opportunity to meander down the lovely country lanes, lined with poplars and wild flowers. 

A good starting point for a wine tour is Bodega La Rural, in Maipú, 16km (10 miles) from the center of Mendoza. This huge winery, founded by the Rutini family towards the end of the 19th century, houses an excellent wine museum that will help you get a feel for how the industry’s technology has developed over the past four centuries, from the earthenware jugs, manual corking devices and horse-pulled carts of the colonial era to the stainless steel tanks, pneumatic pressers and destemmers used today.

Mendoza’s most important wine-growing region is Luján de Cuyo, located around 20km (12 miles) southwest of the capital. The area is home to many of Argentina’s most respected bodegas – the ones that have done most to transform the image of the country’s wine industry from that of a plonk-producing sleeping giant to that of a cutting-edge fine-wine exporter.  

Also within an hour’s drive of Mendoza city is the stunningly beautiful Valle de Uco. Here are a number of important wineries open to visitors, including Salentein, Lurton, and Clos de los Siete. 

Aconcagua

At 6,960 meters (22,841ft), Aconcagua is the highest peak outside the Himalayas. The towering mountain is at the center of the Parque Provincial Aconcagua, an important nature reserve. 

Aconcagua means “stone watchtower” in the Huarpe dialect. It is perpetually blanketed in snow, and its visible southern face presents a tremendous 3,000-meter (10,000ft) wall of sheer ice and stone. The clear mountain air creates the illusion that Aconcagua lies quite close to the road, but the peak is actually 45km (28 miles) away. You can walk as far as Laguna de los Horcones, a green-colored lake at the mountain’s base.

Most expeditions tackle the northern face. The climb is “straightforward,” in the sense that no technical skill is required, but excellent fitness and appropriate equipment are musts. Most of the casualties on the mountain are due to altitude sickness, inadequate equipment, or climbers attempting to summit against the advice of their guides. The Cementerio de los Andinistas is a small graveyard for those who have died – and a few die every year – in the attempt to scale Cerro Aconcagua.

The best time to attempt the climb is mid-January to mid-February. Further information can be obtained in Mendoza at the Club Andinista, or on the Aconcagua website (www.aconcagua.com). 

Valle de la Luna

For anyone with even a passing interest in geology, Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon, officially known as Parque Provincial Ischigualasto) is an essential part of a Cuyo itinerary, but it is not easy to reach. 

This extensive park covers a 62,000-hectare (153,000-acre) area and, together with Parque Provincial Talampaya in La Rioja, forms a Unesco World Heritage Site. Parque Provincial Ischigualasto is set in a large natural depression where constant erosion by wind and water through millennia has sculpted a series of sandstone formations of strange shapes and an abundance of colors.

Beyond its beauty, the Valle de la Luna has great geological and paleontological significance. In prehistoric times (even before the birth of the Andes) this area was covered by an immense lake, surrounded, during the Triassic period, by rich fauna and flora. A two-meter (6ft) -long reptile, the Dicinodonte, was one of the most typical inhabitants of the area. Sixty-three different species of fossilized animals have been found here.

Discover Argentina...

Read about the impact of Eva Perón, the mythology of the gaucho and what it's like to visit an estancia, tucking into an Argentine steak, and our list of the country's top attractions...