Rosario hugs the banks of the winding Parana river four hours north of Buenos Aires. The same Parana that forms Iguazu Falls on the Argentine/Brazilian border another 1,041 km up river.Perhaps Rosario's greatest claim to fame comes from it's being the birthplace of the Argentine flag. It makes this claim and even has a gigantic memorial in commemoration, but quiet Entre Rios on the other side of the river says that since the flag was born on an island in ...

Why are there no Nortes here? I know, we call ourselves Americans, but isn't that a slap to those of Latin America, who are also Americans. 'Course, they don't call themselves Americans (do they?), but it's still a little arrogant of us, so I prefer to call us what the Paraguayans called Kathleen when she was there in the Peace Corps--Nortes.So why do our countrymen not come to Merlo? Shopkeepers tell us they almost never see anyone from the Unite...

We love this town!  Maybe it's the high concentration of negative ions like they say, or maybe it's the exquisite climate--purported in all the marketing hype to be one of three micro climates in the world, or maybe it's just because it's warm and sunny and rains only at night.But it's a favorite, right in there with Junin de los Andes and Salta.If you google this place you'll learn that it had an 85% increase in population in the last 1...

I'd known there were people living in wild places like this, but I'd never had them cook me lunch.Bob and I took a 4x4 tour into the Sierras de los Comechingones, the mountains outside of Merlo that form a natural border between the provinces of Cordoba and San Luis. We drove to the top-- 2200 meters, or 7,217 feet, and hiked to a beautiful waterfall from there.The top stretches out forever. This sucker is w i d e, none of this pointy top business here, t...

We hadn't done anything fun for days and were sick of ourselves. So when the taxi came we asked him what any stupid foreigner would: Is there a golf course around here?What's the guy gonna say? Yea, there's one just around the corner? Not when he can take us to one waaaaaay out in the boonies. It was beautiful--Nicklaus designed--but after driving 50 miles it's-- what else?--closed. So now what do we do?  We already owe this guy an arm and a l...