Because I was staying in the Llao Llao Hotel 1 of Argentina's premier accommodations, I was ushered in to a exclusive arrivals hang whose rough-hewn design indicated a 1940's Hollywood movie set. Soon I became speeding by way of Bariloche, heading towards a vista so surreal this could have been hand crafted by Magritte-towering hills of pure granitic crowned by glistening snow. Did a single peak truly appear like an eagle's head?The street wound past luxe vacation houses hidden within the woods alongside Lake Nahuel Huapi, the biggest of the region's lakes, its cobalt blue waters whipped to a froth through the Andean winds. Then the Llao Llao swung into view-a huge, rustic, neo-Helvetian pile on a hilltop, with Nahuel Huapi on one side along with a smaller lk to the other. A bit log chapel sat with woods as a backdrop. Roses climbed the rail fence along the driveway.

The Llao Llao is not just a resort; it's the centerpiece of the region, the key for the elaborate fantasy that informed the area's development. Throughout the 1930's, Argentina's military government developed two contiguous countrywide parks that extend for 160 miles along the rugged Chilean border; the Llao Llao was their capstone. Parks and hotels alike had been the brainchildren of Ezequiel and Alejandro Bustillo, brothers who'd fallen beneath the spell of "el Sur," the vast and trackless Patagonian wilderness that Argentina's army had wrested in the natives just a half-century earlier. Ezequiel was the visionary bureaucrat, head of your Countrywide Park Service and central to the creation of its initial park, Nahuel Huapi. Alejandro was the architect who transformed these craggy surroundings into stone-and-wood stage sets. In their hands, the Patagonian of your nomadic Mapuche and Tehuelche nations became a romantic Alpine fantasia. Picture a band of gauchos singing "Edelweiss" through the campfire and you have got the common thought.

Definitely the Llao Llao is nothing if not operatic. Its steeply pitched roofs, massive stone chimneys, and reddish log walls-made in the coihue tree, indigenous for the local Andean forests-are well suited to the overwrought landscape. Inside, the deep-red log paneling is defined away by cascading deer-antler chandeliers, chairs upholstered in exotic skins, and enough stuffed birds and fish to form a regional museum of fauna. A grand staircase leads to El Asador the double-height grill room, where beef and trout and succulent Patagonian lamb are served hot through the coals at tables overlooking the lake. But the actual excitement is outdoors. Just beyond the helipad is really a dock from which motor launches leave for tours of Lake Nahuel Huapi. To the south a single highway roughly follows the continental divide into Nahuel Huapi National Park, providing access towards the mountains that, from here, appear so impenetrable.

I traveled this road the next day, turning off the two-lane blacktop at Lake Mascardi onto a narrow gravel road that winds for 30 miles for the base of Mount Tronador, at 11,660 feet the monarch of your park. Mascardi is really a narrow lk wedged tightly in to the mountains; at its far finish, halfway down the gravel road, a series of trails branch to the wild. You are able to follow these for days, trekking from valley to crest and back once again, sleeping in crude shelters or pitching your own tent. I had one thing a bit much more modest in thoughts: a brief uphill hike for the Cascada de los Csares, a waterfall on a stream that flows into LK Mascardi from a much more compact lake nestled in a fold about a thousand feet greater.

I found the trail near the turnoff for the Hotel Tronador, a rustic lodge that's been run by the identical family given that 1929. It had rained each evening for days-soaking downpours borne on dark clouds in the Pacific-but so dense was the black, loamy earth that mud was barely an concern. The trail cut through dense stands of bamboo-like trees on its way up the mountainside. Magnificent coihue trees provided shade from the sun, their tiny green leaves sparkling in horizontal sheaves. I could really feel a light breeze on the trail, but overhead the wind whistled by means of the branches so loudly that I didn't hear the waterfalls till I had been practically upon them. Then, suddenly, I was in the edge of a cliff, face-to-face with 230 toes of cascading snowmelt.