🇦🇷 Argentina · Cuyo
Carpintería and Cortaderas are two quiet hill villages in the Conlara Valley, at the foot of the Sierras de los Comechingones, on the Camino de la Costa (RP 1) that runs south from the popular Villa de Merlo, but with a gentler, more family pace. They share Merlo's famous local microclimate, and Carpintería has a title of its own: it's the National Capital of Free Flight, with one of the country's most spectacular paragliding launch ramps at the Mirador de los Cóndores.
They're ideal for anyone after nature and hill-country rest without the bustle of the busier resorts: hill rivers and streams to cool off in, natural swimming spots, trails, cabins tucked into the vegetation and clean air. Their closeness to Merlo lets you combine the calm of these villages with the services and attractions of the neighboring resort town.
This guide covers the essentials of Carpintería and Cortaderas: the rivers and natural swimming spots, the walks and hill activities, small-town life and the crafts, the closeness to Merlo and the rest of the Conlara Valley, and the regional food. A destination for enjoying the quieter side of the Sierras de los Comechingones.
Carpintería and Cortaderas are hill villages of the Conlara Valley, at the foot of the Sierras de los Comechingones, in an area with an ancient Comechingón presence and criollo farming settlement. Neighbors of Merlo, they grew as quiet towns of rivers and hills, and today they are places to rest that share the region's famous hill-country microclimate. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 'Gateway to Cuyo' between the sierras and the plain: land of Comechingones and Ranqueles, contributor to the Army of the Andes, home of Colonel Pringles, of the Sierras de los Comechingones and of the red canyon country of the Sierra de las Quijadas.
Read the history of San Luis →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before there was a single gravel road in the Conlara Valley, this hillside already had owners: two peoples who called themselves Hênîa, to the north, and Kâmîare, to the south, each with its own identity, although official history ended up lumping them under a single name, Comechingones, which in Quechua would mean something like 'those who live in caves or holes in the ground'. And the name was no accident: their dwellings, known as 'pit houses', were semi-underground shelters dug straight into the soil and roofed with straw and branches, large enough for several families to live under a single structure. It was architecture designed for the extreme hill climate: cool in summer, warm in winter, almost invisible in the landscape.
Far from being merely nomadic hunters, the Comechingones were skilled farmers, heirs to techniques of Andean origin: they grew maize, beans, quinoa and squash with irrigation systems that secured the harvest even in the driest years, and rounded out their diet by hunting guanacos, deer and hares, and gathering carob and chañar. They also raised llamas, wove, made pottery and basketry, and developed a worldview in which the sun and the moon held a central place, with ceremonies on hills and in sacred caves at the solstices and equinoxes. They were, in short, a complex society well adapted to these hills that tourists now walk in search of clean air and crystal-clear rivers, long before any European arrived.
The Spanish conquest and the encomienda system gradually broke up these communities through the 16th and 17th centuries, but their name stuck to these mountains forever: the Sierras de los Comechingones, the same range that today separates San Luis from Córdoba and at whose foot, much later, the towns of Carpintería and Cortaderas grew.
Carpintería was not always called Carpintería. Its documented origins go back to 1712, when the first distribution of land among the area's traditional families took place, and for a long time the spot was known as 'Las Tablas', a name that was no accident: Dominican friars who arrived from San Juan in the 17th century worked the local timber and built carts in rough workshops to trade with Córdoba, generating work and a craft trade around it. From that came, in time, the final name: Carpintería ('carpentry'), in tribute to those carpenters' workshops that worked the timber of the hills. The town took its final shape under the protection of the Chapel of Nuestra Señora de Luján, and although there is no precise founding date, regional historians point to don Cándido Becerra as the first significant administration over these lands, which he received by inheritance.
Cortaderas, the other village in this district, has a parallel history and a much more precise date: the oldest documentary record dates from 1712, when Tomás Fernández divided his lands by will among relatives and people who had served him well, and on 21 November 1731 captain Miguel Arias formally took possession of those lands before the mayor of the city of San Luis himself, Miguel de Vílchez. But the date Cortaderas celebrates as its founding is 23 October 1833, the day the first residents sent a letter requesting the creation of the town's first school —a milestone that, more than a century later, in 1940, would finally be formalized with Law 1697, which created the post of municipal commissioner—. The town's name, far simpler than its neighbor's, comes from the cortadera, a herbaceous plant with lance-shaped leaves that can reach two meters in height and grew abundantly along the area's watercourses.
These very different origins —one town born of a craft trade, the other of a land distribution and a plant on the riverbank— explain why, despite sharing today the same microclimate, the same valley and the same tourist destination, Carpintería and Cortaderas each keep their own identity and their own history within the Conlara Valley.
Carpintería and Cortaderas share with nearby Villa de Merlo the region's famous microclimate, marked by low humidity, plenty of sun and air considered among the healthiest, thanks to their position on the slope of the Comechingones. That microclimate, which made Merlo famous as a health and wellness destination, benefits the whole Conlara Valley and was one of the factors that drove tourism in these villages.
As Merlo grew as a resort town through the 20th century and the start of the 21st, the neighboring towns in the valley began receiving visitors too, drawn by their greater quiet and by the shared hill setting, the rivers and the good weather. Carpintería and Cortaderas positioned themselves as gentler, more family-oriented alternatives, with cabins, guesthouses and an offering built around rest, complementing Merlo's busier scene.
That is how a hill circuit took shape in which the various villages of the Conlara Valley —Merlo, Carpintería, Cortaderas, Los Molles and others— offer complementary experiences: the resort town with its services and activities, and the quiet towns with their rivers, their calm and their country life. Many visitors choose to stay in these more peaceful villages and make use of how close Merlo is, combining rest and action.
Today Carpintería and Cortaderas are established destinations for rest and nature within the Conlara Valley, valued precisely for their quiet and their hill setting. They keep the character of small, gentle towns, with streets among the greenery, crystal-clear rivers and natural swimming spots that are their big draw in the warm months, especially for families.
The tourist offering grew around that calm: there are plenty of hill cabins among the trees, quiet guesthouses and inns, and a regional cuisine with kid goat, trout and the valley's produce in the lead. Craft and producer markets round out the experience, offering local jams, preserves and weavings.
Being close to Merlo is still one of their great advantages: from these villages you easily reach the neighboring resort town's services, viewpoints and activities, including paragliding, while keeping the serenity of your lodging. From country towns at the foot of the Comechingones to hill-country retreats, Carpintería and Cortaderas represent the quietest and most natural side of tourism in the Conlara Valley.
The region's fame is tied to a claim repeated like a tourist legend: that the Merlo area and the Conlara Valley have one of the best climates in the world, sometimes cited as 'the third best'. Beyond the advertising line, there are concrete geographical reasons behind the famous microclimate. The Sierras de los Comechingones, which rise to the east forming a natural wall more than 2,000 meters high (the highest point of the whole range is Cerro Champaquí, at about 2,790 m, already on the Córdoba side), act as a barrier against the humid winds and create particular conditions on the slopes and in the valley to the west.
That layout favors low humidity, plenty of hours of sun, a marked temperature range and the presence of negative ions in the air, associated with hill settings with moving water, to which beneficial effects on health and mood have traditionally been attributed. Carpintería and Cortaderas, sitting on the same slope at the foot of the Comechingones, fully share this microclimate with Merlo.
Geologically, the Comechingones are old hills, of Precambrian and Palaeozoic rock eroded over hundreds of millions of years, which explains their rounded shapes, their gorges and the crystal-clear streams that run down toward the valley. That combination of ancient geology, mild microclimate and hill water is, at bottom, the natural base on which the whole tourist appeal of the area was built, and these quiet villages are one of its gentlest expressions.