🇦🇷 Argentina · Patagonia
Aluminé is a town in west-central Neuquén, on the banks of the river of the same name, and the provincial capital of whitewater sports: its class II to IV rapids hosted the 2018 Rafting World Championship, and every season (October to April) they draw paddlers from all over the country. If you're looking for where to raft in Patagonia, this turquoise river born in Lake Aluminé is one of the best answers going.
But rafting is only the way in. Aluminé is the base for exploring the northern sector of Lanín National Park, the least visited and wildest: lakes Quillén, Rucachoroi and Ñorquinco, ringed by forests of thousand-year-old araucarias (pehuenes), with empty beaches, first-rate trout fishing and rough campsites. To the north, about 55-60 km away along the river canyon, wait Villa Pehuenia and Moquehue, one of the most photogenic corners of Neuquén.
This is also Mapuche-Pehuenche land: the Aigo, Currumil and Puel communities have lived here since long before the town existed, and their culture — the piñón as a sacred food, the loom, community-run tourism — is an essential part of the trip. If you can, come in March or April, when the piñón is harvested and the town celebrates the Fiesta del Pehuén, with gaucho rodeo, music and the flavors of the cordillera.
Aluminé sits on ancestral Mapuche-Pehuenche territory, in a region of pehuén (araucaria) forests, a sacred tree whose fruit, the piñón, was a staple food for the communities for centuries. The town was officially founded in 1915 as a state outpost in the territory and grew through the 20th century around rural and forestry life. Today it is the provincial capital of whitewater sports: the Aluminé river hosted the 2018 Rafting World Championship. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of volcanoes, lakes and the araucaria: Pehuenche and Mapuche land in northern Patagonia, world capital of the giant dinosaurs, heart of the Vaca Muerta shale and gateway to the Route of the Seven Lakes.
Read the history of Neuquén →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Every March, when the araucaria cones finish ripening on the slopes around Aluminé, a Pehuenche family of three adults can gather between 65 and 85 kilos of piñones a day, adding up to some 2,500 kilos over the season. This isn't folkloric trivia: for centuries that harvest set the entire social calendar of the area's communities and decided whether winter would be spent hungry or with a full pantry. The fruit of the araucaria, the piñón, was nothing less than the basis of survival in the Neuquén cordillera, and that absolute dependence explains why the tree became sacred.
The Aluminé region is, above all, the land of the pehuén: the araucaria, that majestic, long-lived tree with a straight trunk and umbrella-shaped crown that defines the landscape of west-central Neuquén province. In the worldview of the area's indigenous peoples, the pehuén was created by Ngünechen, the chief deity of the Mapuche pantheon, specifically to feed his children. That relationship of dependence and gratitude is renewed every year at the nguillatún, the most important ceremony of the Mapuche-Pehuenche people, where thanks are given for the piñones and for everything the land provides.
Out of that relationship came the name of the Pehuenche ('people of the pehuén'), the communities who lived in these forests and mountains and organized much of their life around the piñón harvest, still considered one of the most important activities of the annual social calendar. Over time the Pehuenche were absorbed into the wider Mapuche world, while keeping their strong identity bond with the araucaria. That cultural root is still alive today in the region's communities.
The place names of the area — Aluminé, Quillén, Ñorquinco, Moquehue — reflect that indigenous inheritance. To understand Aluminé and its surroundings you have to recognize that this is deeply Mapuche-Pehuenche territory, where the araucaria forest is not just a natural attraction but the heart of an ancient culture that still beats in its celebrations, its food and its way of life.
Until the end of the 19th century, the territory of present-day Aluminé remained under the control of the Mapuche-Pehuenche communities, outside the reach of the Argentine state. That changed with the so-called Conquest of the Desert (1878-1885), the military campaign the Argentine army, under Julio A. Roca, carried out to subdue the indigenous peoples and incorporate Patagonia into national territory. The communities of the Neuquén cordillera suffered displacement, deaths and the loss of much of their ancestral land.
The first settlers in the specific area of Aluminé, already in the new context after the military campaign, arrived only in 1904. Among them stands out the Dutchman Cristian Joubert, who settled with his family at the hamlet of Maipén, very close to the present town, and who is usually remembered as one of the area's non-indigenous pioneers. Over the following years, requests were made to set aside public land in order to establish a formal town on the riverbank.
The founding date Aluminé celebrates today is October 20, 1915, when an executive decree (Decree No. 0664) designated the fledgling settlement as the seat of the department of the same name, cementing its administrative role within what was then the National Territory of Neuquén. Growth was slow in the decades that followed: the town's first school opened only in 1928, on June 26 of that year, later to be known as School No. 52, the seed of the public services the town gradually acquired.
Once the settlement was established, the state built roads and brought in criollo and European-descended settlers, who took up sheep and goat farming and forestry. The settlement grew around the Aluminé river and the roads linking it with Zapala and the cordillera. As for the town's own name, there are two main hypotheses: one derives it from the Mapuche words 'alum' (shining) and 'mine' or 'minu' (hollow), meaning a shining hollow or depression; the other links it more directly to the river that crosses the valley. Unlike other Patagonian towns that sprang up around the railway, Aluminé grew tied to rural life and to the Chilean border, in an area of hard winters and difficult communications. That relative remoteness preserved both its landscapes and the presence of the indigenous communities, which never disappeared from the territory.
The town of Aluminé took shape through the 20th century around the river of the same name, in an area that, after Patagonia was absorbed into the Argentine state, came to depend on rural life, transhumant herding and forestry. Its out-of-the-way location, among mountains, forests and lakes, kept the town relatively off the main tourist circuits for a long time, preserving a quiet, unvarnished character. While Bariloche and San Martín de los Andes were turning into international brands, Aluminé stayed a secret shared among anglers, crianceros and curious travelers.
As nature and adventure tourism developed, Aluminé found an exceptional asset in its river. The Aluminé, fast and crystal clear and fed by cordilleran snowmelt, turned out to be ideal for rafting and kayaking, with stretches ranging from family-friendly class II to class IV for experts. International recognition came in the 2010s: the International Rafting Federation (IRF) chose its rapids for the 2017 pre-World Championship and, in November 2018, Aluminé and Villa Pehuenia hosted the Rafting World Championship, which brought together teams from dozens of countries on the Upper Aluminé circuit. For a town of a few thousand people, staging a world championship was a before-and-after: it put its name on the global sporting map and cemented an identity that the Neuquén legislature made official by declaring it the provincial capital of whitewater sport and tourism through Law 3457.
Today, Aluminé combines its traditional rural profile and its deep Mapuche-Pehuenche roots with a growing nature tourism: rafting and kayaking from October to April, world-class fly fishing, hiking, the lakes of northern Lanín National Park and the araucaria forests on the way to Villa Pehuenia. Every autumn, the Fiesta del Pehuén — with gaucho rodeo, artisans and the celebration of the piñón harvest — is a reminder that, before it was an adventure destination, this was and still is the land of the people of the pehuén. That mix of adrenaline, indigenous culture and uncrowded landscapes is the region's main appeal.
Much of Aluminé's surroundings lie within Lanín National Park, created in 1937 to protect one of the country's most valuable stands of Andean-Patagonian forest, including the imposing Lanín volcano and the extensive araucaria and coihue woods. The northern sector of the park — lakes Quillén, Ñorquinco, Rucachoroi and Hui Hui — is a short distance from Aluminé and is its main natural asset.
Protecting the Araucaria araucana has been one of the region's great conservation concerns. Declared a National Natural Monument in Argentina, the species is threatened by fire, historical logging and, more recently, by a fungus that attacks mature trees. Its extremely slow growth and enormous longevity make it a symbol of how fragile these ecosystems are.
In recent decades, park management has moved towards a model of co-management with the Mapuche communities living within its boundaries, recognizing their territorial rights and their role in caring for the forest. And so Aluminé's natural history and human history come back together: the pehuén that fed the Pehuenche is today, all at once, a protected species, a tourism emblem and the axis of the whole region's identity.