Argentina is in all ways the definition of fabulous, as most Argentineans would be more than happy to tell you. South America’s darling and second largest nation (after Brazil) is teeming with fantastic culture and biodiversity, ultra hip cities like Buenos Aires and an unabated passion for fine wine, scrumptious steak and an uncompromised quality of life. Following a recent economic crisis, the country is just as splendid a destination while leaving a far smaller hole in your wallet.

Raise Your Glass, Your Consciousness and Your Elevation

Argentina’s central fertile plain of the Pampas is the main agriculture hub and South America’s world renowned wine producing region. Córdoba, Argentina’s second city, is the heart of this region and full of universities, historic museums and an extremely posh and youthful nightlife. Just southwest of Córdoba is the wine capital of Mendoza. Come for the harvest festivals at the end of February and stay to enjoy the warm hospitality during a vineyard tour of the many bodegas in March and April. Explore the surrounding rocky desert by hopping on a horseback riding expedition or paddling down some whitewater with a local guide.

Nestled against the Andes Mountain Range, the Mendoza region is also home to South America’s tallest peak, Cerro Aconcagua, at 22,834 ft. Guided trekking expeditions to the top can be arranged for those with appropriate expertise. Others may find the trip to base camp exhilarating enough. The area is an extremely popular Andes ski destination as well, including the winter resorts of Las Leñas and San Carlos de Bariloche.

Global Heritage, National Treasure

The diversity of wildlife and terrain in Argentina is arguably unmatched in South America. Península Valdés is a World Heritage Site on the east coast of the Patagonian region with more visible biodiversity than any other region in Argentina. Sea lions, penguins, whales, armadillos, guanacos and gray foxes all grace the shores with their regular presence at certain times of the year. Enjoy the pristine quality of surrounding Patagonia, quite possibly the cleanest place on earth. Farther south, Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (Glacier National Park) is literally an incredibly moving experience. Strategically placed cat-walks and guided tours allow visitors to see the remarkable sliding ice blocks from stable distances, including the gargantuan Perito Moreno Glacier. This also might be the closest you have ever found yourself to the South Pole!

Argentina’s unique north-south axis makes for a most dynamic single-county travel opportunity. Jungles in the far north, glaciers in the deep south, the Incan Andes to the West and just about everything imaginable in between make up just a few reasons why anyone must explore Argentina – not to mention the wildly alive and electrifying epicenter that is the capital city of Buenos Aires. Don’t forget that in the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed. January is extremely hot in the north, with temperatures exceeding 110F in places. The south is cold, still with the coldest months from May to September.

About the Author: For more information on international travel and discount airfare to Argentina, visit www.cfares.com, your source for cheap airfare on the web.

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Argentina is a republic in southern South America, a beautiful region with vast plains and deserts, thundering glaciers and some of the greatest waterfalls on earth. For tourists, Argentina offers thousands of premier hotels.

Argentina hotels are excellent accommodation facilities located in and around several tourist destinations, cities and areas in Argentina. One can choose from a wide range of small boutique style hotels, discount hotels, resorts and villas, or expensive luxury hotels. The luxury hotels in Argentina have state-of-the-art accommodation facilities with buffet breakfast, personal butler services, meeting rooms, swimming pools, health clubs, private parking, room service, bars, restaurants, and other amenities. Recreation facilities such as tennis courts and game room are also available at all hotels.

Some hotels are located very close to the downtown areas and others are far from metropolitan areas. Buenos Aires, the capital and largest city of Argentina, houses many expensive resorts and budget hotels. The hotels located close to the waterfalls, mainly at Iguazu Falls, are ideal destinations for nature enthusiasts. Many budget hotels are located on the southern tip of Argentina.

To get hotel rooms of your choice, you must reserve them before your journey. The best option is online hotel reservations that allow you to select and book a hotel and receives an instant confirmation for your hotel reservation. Some travel agencies offer up to 80% discount on hotel reservations with travel coupons.

Alvear Palace Hotel, Intercontinental Hotel, Sheraton Hotel, Sheraton Libertador, Caridge Hotel, Nahuel Huapi Hotel, and Nevada Hotel are some prominent accommodations. The price rate for each hotel varies. The room rates may change during the peak seasons. You can reserve a standard room at a minimum rate of $100 and an executive suite for around $600. Most hotels accept MasterCard, American Express and Traveler?s Checks.

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Buenos Aires is the kind of city that has “something for everyone.” Bars and restaurants are plentiful throughout the city. The locals take their time with dinner and include some wonderful wines with their meal.

Dinnertime generally doesn’t begin until 8.30 pm. Popular cuisine includes everything from Argentine barbecues, known as “asado,” to Japanese sushi. Argentineans have a strong love for meat, so vegetarians may have to make do with fish and salads and a smaller selection of vegetarian dishes.

Step into the Palermo, Recoleta, Puerto Madero, and Las Cañitas neighborhoods for the widest array of cuisine to suit your palate. For starters, or a quick meal, empanadas are often a popular choice. These are pieces of baked or fried pastry stuffed with chicken, beef, ham, cheese, boiled eggs, olives, or vegetables. Or you can order a mixture of all of the above. Pizza is a popular favorite with numerous pizzerias found throughout the city. Franchises like Subway are also available for those who prefer familiar fast food. Pasta is also quite commonly chosen as a daily meal. Regular culinary fare is often simple, centering around meat, potatoes, and bread.

Steakhouses can be found throughout Buenos Aires due to the popularity of asado, where chicken and beef (as well as their offals) are barbecued over charcoal. Meat is often served rare unless a preference is specifically requested.

For a more refined European style meal, the filet mignon at Bife de Loma comes highly recommended for its tenderness and flavor. Argentina is famous for its wine, so be sure to sample some of these (like the Malbec) while you’re here. At Bife de Loma, a four course meal for two inclusive of wine and a tip could amount to less than $100.

El Gato Dumas is also a popular restaurant for its Parisian appeal. The owner, Dumas, is well known in Argentina, having made numerous television appearances as well as creating in-flight menus for Argentina’s national airline.

Sweetmeats are also very popular in Argentina. Ice creams are one of the most loved of all of these, where all natural ingredients are used. Freddo, Volta and Persicco are recommended, although many others would easily hit the spot as well. Dulce de Leche-a milky caramel flavored ice cream-tastes excellent when added to a warm flan or when used in Havannets.

While Buenos Aires does come with the standard fast food and pasta establishments as well as a wide range of exotic Oriental and European cuisine, one needs to be adventurous and try the local cuisines of asado and local fast food like empanadas to truly get in touch with the “flavor” of the city.

Orson Johnson writes for Holiday Velvet, a website providing Buenos Aires holiday apartments & Holiday apartments

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Buenos Aires popularity is constantly increasing, that is why, a lot of people from other countries is coming to the city to establish their businesses, for vacations, to work or to live there. But as they need a place to live and normally they don’t know if they are going to stay for a short or long period of time, instead of buying a new house, they usually rent an apartment.

Renting an apartment in Buenos Aires, is becoming a really common, that is why more and more people that already live there, is already starting new companies that are used as brokers for renting an apartment in Buenos Aires. Apartments are rented already having furniture, Cable TV, VCR, Telephone, Air conditioning plus all the things you may need to live, so we can say that the apartments in Buenos Aires are fully equiped.

While the most expensive apartments are located at the best neighbourhoods, such as Puerto Madero, Recoleta, Palermo, Las Cañitas and downtown, there are also cheaper ones, located in neighbourhoods that are still good ones, and you can get them cheaper.

Some apartments have also got really good services, such as swimming pools, saunas, gymnasiums, laundries and tennis courts.

Most of them are located in places which attract tourists atention, such as shopping centers, restaurants, bars/pubs and night clubs.

There is also a lot of persons that choose to stay in apartments, because it is cheaper than a hotel. And most people just rent apartments for 2-3 months, because they want to learn one of Buenos Aires main activities: Tango.

Buenos Aires apartments are a really good thing to rent, as you can save a lot of money, by renting one instead of a hotel, and the best thing is that you feel as a Buenos Aires resident.

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Cross the street and everything changes. Buenos Aires, more than most cities of a comparable size, gives you the feeling of a patchwork quilt city – a city which is defined by its neighborhoods (barrios).

If you ask a porteño, one of Buenos Aires residents, where he’s from, he won’t say Buenos Aires – he’ll give you his neighborhood’s name. And if you ask him which barrio is the best, any self-respecting porteño will tell you that his barrio is.

It’s best to take this advice lightly and sample a handful.

The barrios commonly visited by tourists and travelers include, in descending order of popularity:

1) Recoleta. Buenos Aires’ equivalent of New York’s Upper East Side or London’s Knightsbridge. Fancy, ornate and posh. A quick list of things to see and do include the cemetery, the lobbies of the five star hotels (of which the Alvear is the most ostentatious), and Avenida Santa Fe’s shopping.

2) Palermo. Known for its parks as well as its restaurants, bars and colorful little shops. When Palermo is mentioned as the best place in Buenos Aires to go out, it’s probably Palermo Viejo and Palermo Hollywood (two micro-barrios) that are being referred to. They’re BA’s hippest places to be seen at the moment, where you can take part in the city’s crazy nightlife that doesn’t even begin to slow down until the sun’s already risen. (A proper Buenos Aires night out should finish with breakfast.)

3) Downtown (Microcentro). This is where Buenos Aires’ suits go on a business day. It’s the center of the nation’s economy, a place of high rise office buildings, narrow crowded streets, and exhaust fumes. For the tourist without business concerns, it’s almost entirely devoid of interest (though you wouldn’t know it from the large numbers who flock there). Towards San Telmo, in the older part of the downtown area, there are sites to be seen, however: the Plaza de Mayo, the Casada Rosada (the “Pink House”, Buenos Aires’ equivalent to the White House) and the Manzana de las Luces are all worth a visit.

4) San Telmo. A barrio of cobblestone streets, antique stores, and colonial area mansions. In the early days of Buenos Aires, the Spanish and upper-crust criollos established themselves in this area and built grandiose buildings with interior patios. When those moneyed citizens fled San Telmo and took off for Recoleta to escape cholera epidemics in the late 19th century, the mansions were abandoned to squatters and San Telmo was transformed into the center of Buenos Aires bohemia. Recently, interest from visitors, foreign and Argentine alike, has brought gentrification to the barrio. This means security, once a sore spot, has improved, but prices have shot up as well.

5) One place where it is still best to watch your wallet though is La Boca. As a matter of fact, it’s really only recommendable to visit the tourist area of El Caminito where the Argentine Federal Police have been stationed to watch your back. This little street, with its bright colored houses, has very nearly been touristed to death. Still, no visit to Buenos Aires is complete without a visit to the fabled street of garish colors. On game days, the soccer stadium in La Boca is another major reason to visit the barrio.

When you come to Buenos Aires, though, do yourself a favor and try to break out of the established tourist routines, if only for a little while. Just a few recommendations of the lesser visited barrios, where your fellow-citizens and fellow travelers are less likely to be tagging along with you, include:

Las Cañitas in Belgrano. Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants galore (plus, it’s a stone throw from Palermo).

Almagro. What San Telmo used to be, Almagro still is: Bohemian. Check newspaper listings for tango concerts, independent theatre and other events in the area. Meanwhile, the cafe Las Violetas, on the corner of Rivadavia Avenue and Medrano street, is amongst the most beautifully restored historic cafes in the city.

Mataderos, an outlying barrio where the city’s butchers still ply their trade, is also a find, not so much for the barrio itself but for the Sunday afternoon market which takes place in the barrio’s main square. This market is not to be confused with the markets in San Telmo or Recoleta. It’s bigger, better, with a greater variety of authentic hand-craft goods – leather and silver amongst others. In the spring and summer months, gauchos from the nearby countryside perform rodeo displays at the market as well.

About the Author: Scott Ferree is a translator and English instructor, as well as the study abroad coordinator for the Interhispanica Language School in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Interhispanica Spanish School is located in the barrio of Recoleta: http://www.interhispanica.com.ar

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Here are some of the best restaurants in Buenos Aires. It’s not in any order.

Azema, on Angel Carranza at about Honduras or Gorriti. The menu is a fantastic combination of French, Creole, Vietnamese, and Caribbean flavours. The chef is ever present, comes round to chat with pretty much every table if it’s not too busy. Best to go with 3-4 people — usually we just order the whole first page of tapas and then share a few of the mains. The flavours are excellent. Save room for the dessert platter.

Olsen, on Gorriti in Palermo. Their deep chilled vodka list is fantastic. Go for their set menu lunch and if it’s sunny make sure to try and reserve a seat in the garden. Brunch is the best in the Buenos Aires.

De Olivas i Lustres, (Palermo) Go for their version of a tasting menu. They have two different menus. Theres the criolla and the mediterranean option, if you’re 4 you could select one of each. The food is very good, sort of an Argentine take on avant-garde cuisine.

And of course, for cheap asado and cheap wine, go to Las Cholas. It’s northern Argentina cuisine (from Salta) Arevalo y Arce. Prepare to wait. On a Friday night the line will be there until midnight. If you’re 2 people you can usually sneak in fairly quick, otherwise put your name on the list and go have a wander around for a few minutes. Then just wait and see which one you’ll get into first — they’re all packed, and for good reason.

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