Esquel, Chubut, Patagonia. 🇦🇷
A little off the beaten tourist track, but put it at the top of your Argentina list.
I'm going to kick off this post a bit off-topic, but still in true Geólogo Trader fashion, with a rant.
A young female travel blogger, employed by a major Australian mainstream news outlet, recently visited Buenos Aires and penned an article about her experience.
Shite article.
The lady spent as much money as you could and captured fuck all of this great city.
I read the article and it was so boring it made me want to leave the city, let alone visit it from the other side of the world - Australia.
I maintain my stance that there is a serious lack of quality realistic travel content out there.
I'm not claiming that you will discover it through my writing, but my goal is to make it authentic.
It’s also why I want to start up a local barrio steak tour here in Buenos Aires.
People come to Buenos Aires to experience the rich culture in the barrios and…
Eat the world’s best steak at affordable prices!
I’m not talking about visiting tourist-heavy areas like La Boca, I’m talking about ungentrified local barrios like the one I live in.
Stay tuned for that, it’s a work in progress for my loyal subscribers.
With all that being said, Buenos Aires is fucking uncomfortable at this time of the year.
I had a trip planned to Salta for a week because my Argentine girlfriend wanted to visit a place she had never been to before.
I loved it there, so I was happy to go back.
But, a strike at Aeropaque Airport meant our flight was canceled and rebooking would have cost a small fortune.
So I searched around for other flights, reasonably priced.
I was itching (literally) for some cooler weather and mountain time as Buenos Aires is too damn hot in February, and on top of that, there was a rare infestation of aggressive mosquitoes from the pampas plaguing the entire city.
So, an airport strike wasn’t bloody stopping me from going anywhere.
As I biasedly searched for flights to Patagonia, the town of Equel in Chubut Province came up with great flight times and reasonable prices.
I always filter my flights to the airline Aerolineas Argentinas and AEP (Aeroparque) Buenos Aires City Airport. I hate traveling out to Ezeiza (the main international airport > 1hr drive in shitty traffic).
Aerolineas Argentinas, although they’re a product of socialism and torch a $2-3m loss per day, is a good airline to fly and their business class options can be cheap as fuck.
Chubut province is somewhere I’ve been interested in as I dig into investment opportunities in Argentina through mining and mineral exploration.
It’s very anti-mining even though they have the potential to be one of the most prosperous provinces in Argentina with their immense natural resources in the ground.
With 80% of the province being an unhabitable desert, you’d think common sense would prevail and they’d take advantage of their fortune.
But, as the socialist corruption playbook goes, that’s a nope, and the people are poor and can’t have nice things.
That being said, Esquel and this part of Patagonian Chubut, which includes the National Park - Los Alerces are different.
Tucked in close to the towering peaks of Los Andes in pristine Argentine Patagonia, the whole area has a rich history of Welsh immigration, with many families still farming today in beautiful Welsh-style farming towns.
Summer and autumn are ideal times to visit Patagonia, as the climate is more stable compared to the brutal winter weather experienced here.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - famous US outlaws in the late 19 century / early 20 century fled here from New York in 1901.
It’s so beautiful out here that Butch Cassidy wrote in a letter back to the USA that it (almost) cured him of a desire to commit crime.
That mindset lasted only four years, however, as he robbed the local provincial bank and fled to Bolivia.
Still, his ranch remains, and it’s an epic and off-the-radar day visit.
In this article, I’ll go through why you should visit here over other popular Patagonian hotspots.
Whether you are traveling single, as a couple, or with a group of friends.
I’ll drop my duplex Airbnb which cost me $180 USD for 7 nights.
Favourite restaurants - which is one place with two different cuisine options at Argentine geoarbitrage prices.
Car hire recommendation - you need one here, and I found a ripper for the price.
Places to visit and how to manage the time over a week.
I love this sort of traveling as it’s not on many tourist brochures when you visit Argentina, and that, in my view, is exactly where you want to be.