9 Best Sights in Patagonia, Argentina

At the peninsula’s northern tip is the world's largest Magellanic penguin colony at and around Estancia San Lorenzo, numbering some 600,000 penguins. San Lorenzo offers three guided tours (1 hour and 15 minutes) to the penguin colony every afternoon, always with a ranger. Also on site are a restaurant and visitors can tour a sheep ranch and the ruins of a former factory that once processed sea lion blubber and skin. 

It might pale in comparison to the glaciers in El Calafate, but a visit to the shrinking Glaciar Martial in the mountain range just above Ushuaia offers a nice walk. Named after Frenchman Luís F. Martial, a 19th-century scientist who wandered this way aboard the warship Romanche to observe the passing of the planet Venus, the glacier is reached via a panoramic aerosilla (ski lift) or by foot. Take the Camino al Glaciar (Glacier Road) 7 km (4.5 miles) out of town until it ends (this route is also served by the local tour companies). Stop off at one of the teahouses en route (at the foot of the ski lift, when it is functioning) because this is a steep, strenuous 90-minute hike to the top. You can cool your heels in one of the many gurgling, icy rivulets that cascade down water-worn shale shoots or enjoy a picnic while you wait for sunset (you can walk all the way down if you want to linger until after the aerosilla closes). When the sun drops behind the glacier's jagged crown of peaks, brilliant rays beam over the mountain's crest, spilling a halo of gold-flecked light on the glacier, valley, and channel below. Moments like these are why this land is so magical. Note that temperatures drop dramatically after sunset, so come prepared with warm clothing.

Eighty km (50 miles) away on R11, the road to the Glaciar Perito Moreno has now been entirely paved. From the park entrance the road winds through hills and forests of lenga and ñire trees, until all at once the glacier comes into full view. Descending like a long white tongue through distant mountains, it ends abruptly in a translucent azure wall 5 km (3 miles) wide and 240 feet high at the edge of frosty green Lago Argentino.

Although it's possible to rent a car and go on your own (which can give you the advantage of avoiding large tourist groups), virtually everyone visits the park on a day trip booked through one of the many travel agents in El Calafate. The most basic tours start at 4,000 pesos for the round-trip (excluding entrance) and take you to see the glacier from a viewing area composed of a series of platforms wrapped around the point of the Península de Magallanes. The platforms, which offer perhaps the most impressive view of the glacier, allow you to wander back and forth, looking across the Canal de los Tempanos (Iceberg Channel). Here you listen and wait for nature's number-one ice show—first, a cracking sound, followed by tons of ice breaking away and falling with a thunderous crash into the lake. As the glacier creeps across this narrow channel and meets the land on the other side, an ice dam sometimes builds up between the inlet of Brazo Rico on the left and the rest of the lake on the right. As the pressure on the dam increases, everyone waits for the day it will rupture again.

In recent years the surge in the number of visitors to Glaciar Perito Moreno has created a crowded scene that is not always conducive to reflective encounters with nature's majesty. Although the glacier remains spectacular, savvy travelers would do well to minimize time at the madhouse that the viewing area becomes at midday in high season, and instead encounter the glacier by boat or on a mini-trekking excursion. Better yet, rent a car and get an early start to beat the tour buses, or visit Perito Moreno in the off-season when a spectacular rupture is just as likely as in midsummer, and you won't have to crane over other people's heads to see it.

Some 4 km (3 miles) from Puerto Pirámides lies the Lobería Puerto Pirámides, a year-round sea-lion colony that is also a great bird-watching spot. A signposted turnoff from the main road into town leads here, or you can follow the coastal path on foot.

There are gorgeous campsites, simple cabins, fishing-tackle rentals, hot showers, and a basic restaurant at Camping Lago Roca. Make reservations in advance if visiting over the Christmas holidays; at other times the campground is seldom crowded. In high season Cal Tur offer shuttles from Lago Roca to Perito Moreno. For more comfortable accommodations, you can arrange to stay at the Nibepo Aike Estancia at the western end of Lago Roca, about 5 km (3 miles) past the campground. The national park entrance fee is collected only on the road to Perito Moreno Glacier or at Puerto Banderas, where cruises depart, so admission to the Lago Roca corner of the park is free.

The largest glacier in South America, Glaciar Upsala is 55 km (35 miles) long and 10 km (6 miles) wide, and accessible only by boat. Daily cruises depart from Puerto Banderas (40 km [25 miles] west of El Calafate via R11) for the 2½-hour trip. Dodging floating icebergs (tempanos), some as large as a small island, the boats maneuver as close as they dare to the wall of ice that rises from the aqua-green water of Lago Argentino. The seven glaciers that feed the lake deposit their debris into the runoff, causing the water to cloud with minerals ground to fine powder by the glacier's moraine (the accumulation of earth and stones left by the glacier). Condors and black-chested buzzard eagles build their nests in the rocky cliffs above the lake. When the boat stops for lunch at Onelli Bay, don't miss the walk behind the restaurant into a wild landscape of small glaciers and milky rivers carrying chunks of ice from four glaciers into Lago Onelli. Glaciar Upsala has diminished in size in recent years.

This little-visited lake is inside the national park just south of Brazo Rico, 46 km (29 miles) from El Calafate. The area receives about five times as much annual precipitation as El Calafate, creating a relatively lush climate of green meadows by the lakeshore, where locals come to picnic and cast for trophy rainbow and lake trout. Don't miss a hike into the hills behind the lake—the view of dark-blue Lago Roca backed by a pale-green inlet of Lago Argentino with the Perito Moreno glacier and jagged snowcapped peaks beyond is truly outstanding.

An eerie and vast landscape scattered with hundreds of petrified trees takes you more than 75 million years back in time. The palm and conifer trees originally arrived here by river when the area was a tropical delta, although now the sun-bleached and striated badlands are anything but tropical. Dry, parched, and whipped by winds, this place requires a jacket any time of year. Entrance is free, but consider paying for a guide to help you understand exactly what you are looking at. The Monumento Natural Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento is about 30 km (19 miles) from Sarmiento following R26 until you reach the access road on the right. If you don't have your own vehicle, book a remis from Sarmiento: most will charge you for the return trip, including an hour's waiting time.

Just south of Gaiman the green river valley gives way to arid steppes where clearly visible strata reveal more than 40 million years of geological history. Some 600 acres of these badlands—many of them bursting with fossils—make up the Parque Paleontológico Bryn Gwyn, a branch of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew where a fossil trail and botanical gardens await. Confirm with the museum before going as the park can close periodically after heavy rain.