Nestled where the South American continent tapers to its tip, pointing toward Antarctica, Argentina is a country of superlatives and extremes. As the world’s eighth-largest country, slightly smaller than India, Argentina’s diversity can satisfy almost any interest.

Its capital, Buenos Aires, was the first city on the continent to exceed a million inhabitants. Famous for the tango, it has the highest international profile of any South American City, and its European-immigrant vitality has survived repeated crises to remain a cultural as well as political capital.

For some visitors, Buenos Aires alone is enough, but it’s also the port of entry to some of the greatest sights in the Americas. The Río de la Plata, which empties into the South Atlantic here, is longer than the Mississippi; to the west, the gaucho homeland of the flat green pampas stretches beyond the horizon. To the north, the legendary Iguazú Falls are half again the height of Niagara and nearly four times wider. Along the western border with Chile, higher than Alaska’s Denali, the Andean summit of Cerro Aconcagua is “The Roof of the Americas.”

In the southern region of Patagonia, hikers can walk among elephant seals and penguins on the wildlife-packed Península Valdés, though it’s just one of many wildlife reserves on a seemingly endless South Atlantic shoreline. Visitors can marvel at the Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands), where pre-Columbian painters created South America’s oldest aboriginal rock art, and behold the Glaciar Moreno, a grinding river of ice that’s a feast for the eyes and the ears on the eastern edge of the Andes.

Argentine paleontologists have put the desert parks of Ischigualasto and Talampaya on the map with groundbreaking fossil research. Northernmost Patagonia’s forested lakes district reminds visitors of the European Alps, and only New Zealand, Norway, and the Alaska panhandle can match archipelagic Tierra del Fuego’s sub-Antarctic wildlands. Hikers, climbers, rafters and kayakers, and fishermen could spend a lifetime here, and some areas are almost untouched.

Argentina’s not all nature, though. In the shadow of Aconcagua, the Cuyo region is wine country, where literally hundreds of bodegas are making fine wines for the domestic and international markets. Some wine lovers spend their entire vacations here, and others are even moving to Mendoza, one of South America’s most livable cities.