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The Argentine Estancias

"The Argentine Estancias" program is a unique way to experience the real Argentina, away from tourist crowds and immersed in an ambiance of nature, luxury, history and tradition. Staying at beautiful private ranches, you share the abundant lifestyle of the Argentine countryside, hosted by ranch-owners who will make you feel at home.

In Argentina, large rural estates devoted mostly to cattle ranching and growing grain are called estancias. For almost two hundred years they have helped define the country's spiritual, economic and social heritage. The architectural development of the Argentine estancia evolved during the 19th century into the construction of grand European-style mansions true rural palaces of European inspiration that even today preserve the beauty of their lines without altering the old Creole traditions. Styles range from spartan adobe Colonial to baroque, from Moorish to French and Italian Renaissance. Some have ballrooms, Old Master paintings, twenty foot dining tables, two dozen bedrooms, European formal gardens, parks full of red stag for hunting, rivers full of trout for fishing, and polo fields. Some overlook their own glacier or twenty-mile-long lake, on land that comprises entire mountain ranges and river valleys. Other estancias are less impressive in their lodging but unforgettable in their setting and warm hospitality. Each estancia has its own soul, and each provides an ideal way to acquire in-depth knowledge of a particular part of the country by allowing you to share the life and customs of that place.

Janet Mixon of Over and Under has been organizing customized trips to Argentina since 1991 and has personally visited most of the estancias that we represent. Our Argentine associate, Maita Barrenechea has been organizing tailor-designed trips to estancias and special destinations in Argentina since 1982. Together, we offer a selection of fully-first cabin estancias scattered throughout the most interesting and scenic regions of the country. Argentina is a place of stunning variety: the vast, fabled plains of Patagonia; crystal lakes and rivers; the majestic Andes; the captivating wine country; the picturesque northern region with Indian and colonial villages; the fertile Pampa plains, land of the colorful gaucho. The Argentine Estancia program can take you to all these places, as well as to amazing Iguazu Falls and its rain forests lush with fascinating wildlife, to endless iridescent glaciers and sculpted icebergs, to pristine South Atlantic beaches and sightings of southern-right whale, penguins and elephant seals.

Accommodations at the estancias vary in scope and style from working ranches to castles, from simple to palatial. Most feel like an exhilarating cross between a European country-manor hotel and one of the best American dude ranches, providing travelers with different tastes of what is perhaps the finest country living on earth.

We invite you to visit the real Argentina soon, in the incomparable comfort and style of Over & Under's Argentine Estancia program. And on your way into or out of the country, by all means let us arrange for you a few days and nights in the beautiful cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires-the "Paris of the Southern Hemisphere", with its wonderful parks and gardens, great museums and cultural life, excellent restaurants and night-life-for a once in a lifetime combination of country and urban pleasures.