History

One of the best tours off the beaten track you can do from San Martín de los Andes is going to Villa Pehuenia 200 km north of San Martín and a gem still hidden from the massive tourism. Villa Pehuenia lies in the middle of the Pehuen District, one of the best touristic circuits of the Neuquén province. Some tour agencies in San Martín de los Andes do it as a day tour, but we think is much better to spend at least one night in Villa Pehuenia, so you have enough time to enjoy the place and als go thorough the so-called "Pehuenia circuit", one of the main attractions of the area.    The...

PAMPAS Generally speaking, Pampas are the native ethnic groups that lived on the big grasslands of the South American south cone. Over time several groups overlapped on this territory, so the term pampas is not very accurate and leads to frequent misunderstandings. The word “pampa” comes from the Quechua language, meaning plain; the Spanish who were coming from the Andean region after conquering Peru, called “Pampas” to the people living on those plains. These were the so-called “old Pampas” of “Het”, nomads who lived from haunting deer, rheas and guanacos. During the XVII...

Before the Spanish conquerors arrived to America and later, during the second half of the XIX century, the armies of the new estates of Argentina and Chile launched their military campaigns, Patagonia and the Pampas where populated by different indigenous Peoples. Those Peoples have historically being called under the generic term of “Mapuche”, or “Araucanians”, as the Spanish used to call them. Nevertheless, originally those Peoples we not a homogeneous group, but diverse Peoples that were slowly absorbed both culturally and militarily but the Araucanians, in a long process of more than...

A lot has been said and written about the origin of the word "Patagonia", so I will try here to walk through the different theories and legends on the matter. The word "Patagonia" comes from "Patagones", which was the name given by the Portuguese mariner Fernando de Magallanes to the native people found on that part of the world during his 1520 expedition. The goal of the Magallanes expedition was to reach the Indies opening a new route to the West, and the voyage concluded with the first circumnavigation of the Earth which was completed by his subordinate Juan Sebastián Elcano. The expedition...