🇦🇷 Argentina · Patagonia
Nahuel Huapi National Park is the oldest national park in Argentina and one of the most emblematic, in northern Andean Patagonia, straddling the provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén. It protects an extensive territory of Andean-Patagonian forests, glacial lakes, mountains, glaciers and steppe, with the great Lago Nahuel Huapi as the heart of the park. Its main base town is San Carlos de Bariloche, one of the country's most important tourist destinations.
The park is a byword for the Patagonia of lakes and forests: Lago Nahuel Huapi with its arms and islands (such as Isla Victoria), the forests of coihues, lengas and the singular arrayán (with the famous arrayán forest on the Quetrihué peninsula), Cerro Tronador with its glaciers, the ski mountains (Catedral) and an endless run of lakes, waterfalls and lookouts. It offers activities all year: trekking, boating, kayaking, fishing and cycling in summer; skiing and snow sports in winter.
This guide covers the essentials of Nahuel Huapi National Park with a practical eye: Lago Nahuel Huapi and the boat trip to Isla Victoria and the Bosque de Arrayanes, Cerro Tronador and the Ventisquero Negro, the Circuito Chico and the lookouts around Bariloche, Cerro Catedral, the treks and mountain refuges, the current entry fees, where to stay and eat, and how to get there. It's the classic gateway to Argentine Patagonia, with Bariloche as the great tourist hub.
Nahuel Huapi National Park grew out of the Parque Nacional del Sud, created from the land Francisco P. Moreno donated to the state in 1903, the seed of the Argentine national park system. It was formally established as a national park in 1934, which makes it the oldest in the country. Its name, of Mapuche origin, means 'island of the tiger' or 'island of the puma' (from 'nahuel', big cat, and 'huapi', island). The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province that crosses Patagonia from the cordillera to the sea: Tehuelche and Mapuche land, land of Carmen de Patagones and the Conquest of the Desert, of the apples of the Alto Valle, of Bariloche and the Nahuel Huapi, and of the beaches of Las Grutas.
Read the history of Río Negro →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the alpine hotels, the chocolate and the chairlifts, this immense lake already carried the name of a big cat: Nahuel Huapi, 'island of the tiger' in Mapudungun — from 'nahuel', the big cat (the jaguar or, more likely at these latitudes, the puma), and 'huapi', island. The Indigenous peoples who lived on its shores for millennia, Mapuche and before them other hunter-gatherers, knew every arm, every peninsula and every mountain pass of this territory of water, forest and mountains, and left their language etched across the whole map of the region.
The great glacial lake, with its many arms and islands, was the axis of life: a means of communication, a source of resources and a landmark in the landscape. The forests around it — of coihues, lengas, cypresses and the singular arrayanes — and the snowy mountains made up a setting of great natural wealth, and for centuries the area was a crossing between the Argentine and Chilean sides of the range, travelled by Andean peoples.
The first European presence came from the west and in the name of faith: in the 17th century, Jesuits from Chile — also drawn by the legend of the 'City of the Caesars', a fabulous city believed to be hidden in Patagonia — reached the lake. In 1670, Father Nicolás Mascardi founded a mission on the Huemul peninsula of Nahuel Huapi; he died a few years later in Tehuelche lands, and the mission was destroyed in the early 18th century. His name stayed on the map: Lago Mascardi, on the way to Tronador, recalls him. With the advance of the Argentine state over Patagonia in the late 19th century — the so-called 'Conquest of the Desert' — the region was absorbed into the country, in a process that came at a heavy cost to the Indigenous peoples, whose communities are still present and today assert their ancestral bond with the territory.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Nahuel Huapi region became the object of scientific exploration and early settlement. The expert surveyor Francisco Pascasio Moreno reached the lake for the first time in 1876 — he was the first Argentine explorer to get there from the Atlantic — and came back again and again on his Patagonian expeditions, leaving a record of the scenic and scientific value of the lake and its surroundings. His work on the boundary demarcation with Chile, in the early 20th century, tied him forever to this territory.
At the same time, settlers of various origins arrived — Chilean, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish — and established themselves around the lake. In 1902 San Carlos de Bariloche was formally founded, starting out as a small settlement tied to trade across the mountains with Chile: the original trading house of the German Carlos Wiederhold, 'San Carlos', gave it half its name. The central European stamp of those settlers would mark the town's architecture, its food (the chocolate, the tea houses) and its identity forever.
The arrival of the railway in 1934, which connected Bariloche with the rest of the country, was decisive: it turned a remote village into an accessible destination and set off its tourist growth. That same year, the formal creation of the national park would put the region at the centre of a state project without precedent in South America.
The origin of Nahuel Huapi National Park — and of the Argentine national park system as a whole — goes back to a founding gesture. On 6 November 1903, the explorer and naturalist Francisco Pascasio Moreno donated to the national state three square leagues of the land he had received as a reward for his services in the boundary demarcation with Chile, with the express wish that it be conserved as a 'natural public park' for the enjoyment of future generations. Moreno was inspired by the model of Yellowstone, the first national park in the world (1872): with his donation, Argentina became a pioneer of conservation in Latin America.
That donation in the area of the Blest arm of Lago Nahuel Huapi is considered the seed of Argentina's national parks. Out of it came, first, the so-called Parque Nacional del Sud, created by decree in 1922 over a far larger area, the direct forerunner of today's park.
In 1934, with the passing of Law 12.103 — which created the National Parks Directorate and gave the institution a legal framework — the area was formally established as Nahuel Huapi National Park, alongside Iguazú. That makes it the oldest national park in the country. Moreno, who had died poor in 1919, never saw the result of his gesture; his remains rest today on Isla Centinela in Lago Nahuel Huapi, facing the landscapes he wanted to protect, and the catamarans sailing towards Puerto Blest salute him as they pass.
The first president of the National Parks Directorate, the lawyer Exequiel Bustillo, saw the park as a tool of development and sovereignty: the Andean frontier had to be settled, built up and made attractive to tourists. Under his tenure (1934-1944), the state rolled out a monumental works programme at Nahuel Huapi that defined the 'alpine' image of Bariloche we know today: panoramic roads such as the Circuito Chico, guesthouses, chapels, bridges and the town's street layout.
The jewel of the project was the Llao Llao Hotel, designed by Alejandro Bustillo — the director's brother — on a hill between Lagos Moreno and Nahuel Huapi: opened in 1938 and built in wood and stone, it burned down completely in October 1939 and was rebuilt and reopened in 1940, this time with non-combustible materials. The Centro Cívico of Bariloche, opened in 1940 with its local green stone and its arcades, and the first lifts on Cerro Catedral — a pioneer of South American skiing — completed the set. Few times in Argentine history has a national park shaped a town so thoroughly.
That push turned Bariloche into 'the Argentine Switzerland' and Nahuel Huapi into the country's most famous nature destination, the goal of school graduation trips, of the social tourism of the mid-20th century and, later, of international tourism. The architecture of that era — the 'Bustillo' style of stone, wood and steep roofs — is still the postcard image of the region.
Since its creation, Nahuel Huapi National Park has grown along with Bariloche until it became the Patagonian destination par excellence. At more than 700,000 hectares, it protects a mosaic of environments running from humid Andean-Patagonian forest and Valdivian rainforest in the west to steppe in the east, taking in lakes, glaciers, rivers and high summits such as the Tronador, at 3,478 metres. It's home to emblematic species such as the huemul, the pudú, the huillín (a native otter in danger), the Andean condor and forests of coihue, lenga, Andean cypress and the singular arrayán.
In 1971, the Quetrihué peninsula — with its famous forest of centuries-old arrayanes and their cinnamon-coloured trunks — was split off from Nahuel Huapi to create Los Arrayanes National Park, a park of its own of just over 1,700 hectares that in practice works as an annex to the whole and is visited by boat from Villa La Angostura or Bariloche. Isla Victoria, the largest island on the lake, also keeps its own history: it was a forestry station from the early 20th century and preserves rock paintings and planted forests that live alongside the native ones.
Today, Nahuel Huapi's main challenge is balancing the conservation of its natural heritage with the pressure of mass tourism and the urban growth of Bariloche and Villa La Angostura. Forest fires — such as those that hit thousands of hectares in recent summers — invasive species (red deer, American mink, trout in its rivers) and urbanization are its main threats. The National Parks Administration, together with Mapuche communities who assert their ancestral presence in the territory, manages an area that is at once a natural treasure and the tourist heart of Argentine Patagonia.