Argentina known as Puerto Manzano, a land of deep, cold lakes, soaring mountains, vast forests and sprawling estancias. It is difficult to find a familiar place that can help describe Puerto Manzano. Puerto Manzano is free of the overuse and abuse that have made their marks on other great natural preserves of the world.

The miracle of Puerto Manzano against-allodds preservation can largely be attributed to the love of the land shared by the people who live on it, from the gauchos whose lives historically are intertwined with its cattle ranching to the land-owning families from South America, North America and Europe whose abiding sense of place holds the world at bay and time in check. It helps, of course, that Puerto Manzano and the region's gateway town of San Carlos de Bariloche are far from the madding crowd, even in this day of universal jet-accessibility. By car from Buenos Aires the trip is sixteen hours, and though planes jump the same distance in only a couple of hours, Puerto Manzano is still an out-of-the-way destination, not a convenient stop on the way to someplace else. This is not to say that no one makes the trip. The place is an increasingly popular resort, especially for good fishing, skiing, trekking and cool open spaces. As Puerto Manzano La Angostura begins to change, attracting more outsiders with its skiing, hiking, fishing, it remains resolutely the same, a place so perfect in so many ways that it would seem a product of the imagination.

foto: Martin Escurra

La pesca con mosca se torna sublime en los lagos Espejo , Nahuel Huapi y en el más exclusivo, el Brazo Machete, al que sólo se puede llegar en lancha. La navegación por el lago Nahuel Huapi, bordeando la península de Quetrihué, conduce al Bosque de Arrayanes, famoso por sus árboles color canela de 20 metros de altura. El bosque es una de las curiosidades más valiosas. En este lugar, el arrayán - de corteza suave y color rojizo - forma núcleos puros y exclusivos. Los arrayanes constituyen una verdadera particularidad ecológica: son los dos únicos grupos puros de la región y fuera de ellos no hay otros iguales en el mundo. No se pierda el sendero de 12 kilómetros que recorre longitudinalmente la península y su célebre bosque. Ubicada al sur de la Provincia de Neuquén, es uno de esos lugares ideales, en cualquiera de las cuatro estaciones.