🇦🇷 Argentina · Buenos Aires
San Clemente del Tuyú is the first resort you reach coming down the Buenos Aires Atlantic coast from the capital, and that status as 'gateway' gives it a character of its own: here the fine-sand beaches of the open sea sit alongside the crab flats, salt marshes and wetlands of the Bahía de Samborombón, a wetland of international importance (a Ramsar site since 1997). The result is a destination that offers far more than sun and sand: families with children who come for Mundo Marino, anglers after corvina off the pier, birdwatchers who make the pilgrimage to Punta Rasa, and travelers who discover the only hot springs on the Argentine Atlantic coast.
San Clemente's great draw is Mundo Marino, the largest oceanarium in South America, opened in 1979, with dolphin and sea lion shows, a shark tunnel and a marine wildlife rescue center that has returned hundreds of stranded animals to the sea. It's complemented by Termas Marinas Park, a hot springs park beside the bay that runs all year and inside which stands the San Antonio lighthouse, an iron tower from 1892 made in Paris and declared a National Historic Monument. Founded in 1935, the town grew at an unhurried pace compared with Mar del Plata or Pinamar, and keeps a human scale and a family atmosphere that visitors value.
The picture is completed by broad beaches with moderate surf — those in the center with fully equipped beach clubs, those to the north wilder and quieter — the seafront promenade that comes alive on summer nights, sport fishing for corvina and pejerrey, and wildlife-watching trips through the bay reserve, home to one of the last populations of pampas deer in the province. In January and February things get busy and it's worth booking accommodation in advance; out of season the town takes on a calm that's ideal for resting, fishing and enjoying the hot springs.
San Clemente del Tuyú has as its official birthday 23 November 1935, the day the first urban plots were surveyed and marked out on land belonging to the Leloir family, in the old cattle estancias of the Tuyú (a word from an indigenous language referring to the mud or soft ground of the area). Its tourist development took off in the mid-20th century with the improvement of the coastal roads, and consolidated from 1979 with the opening of Mundo Marino, the largest oceanarium in South America. Long before that, in 1892, the San Antonio lighthouse had been lit at Punta Rasa, made in Paris and shipped over in pieces, guiding navigation at the mouth of the Río de la Plata for more than a century.
Read the full history ↓The agro-export heart of Argentina: the endless pampa that was the land of the Querandí and the Pampa peoples, the domain of governor Rosas, the engine of cattle and wheat with La Plata as its purpose-built capital, cradle of the gaucho and of the Atlantic Coast where the whole country spends its summer.
Read the history of Buenos Aires Province →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There is an exact point on the Buenos Aires coast where the fresh water of the Río de la Plata ends and the open sea begins, and that point is Punta Rasa, at the northern tip of San Clemente del Tuyú. Tens of thousands of shorebirds know it: every year, traveling from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, they stop over exactly there, in one of the few places on the planet where a river turns into ocean so abruptly. San Clemente del Tuyú sits at the northern end of the Buenos Aires Atlantic coast, in the Partido de la Costa, right at that point where the Río de la Plata opens out to the sea, in the area of the Bahía de Samborombón. The place name 'Tuyú' comes from the language of the indigenous peoples of the pampas region and is usually associated with the idea of low, waterlogged or muddy ground, which describes the local geography of wetlands, dunes and lagoons well.
Before the Europeans arrived, the pampas region was inhabited by hunter-gatherer peoples, broadly linked to the Querandí in the Buenos Aires area and, further south and inland, to the Pampa groups and, later, the northern Tehuelche. The coastal strip of the Bahía de Samborombón, with its wetlands and its wildlife, was a territory of passage and seasonal resource use.
The Bahía de Samborombón, where San Clemente sits, is one of the most important wetlands in the country, today protected for its value to migratory birds and as a breeding area for pejerrey and other species. That character of a wetland and a transition zone between river and sea shapes the whole natural and human history of the place.
Through the colonial period and much of the 19th century, the Tuyú region was a land of cattle estancias and vast stretches of low ground, given over to raising livestock in a setting of wetlands and grassland. The oldest organized human presence at the tip of the cape is the San Antonio lighthouse, at Punta Rasa: an iron tower 63 meters high made in Paris by the firm Barbier & Cía from 1890, shipped over in pieces, hauled on ox-drawn carts and put into service on 1 January 1892 to guide navigation at the exact point where the Río de la Plata becomes the sea. Today it's a National Historic Monument and it's still working.
The town, by contrast, is much younger than its surroundings suggest. In 1934, the Leloir family — owners of the local estancias — set up the company 'Tierras de San Clemente S.R.L.' to subdivide the so-called 'San Clemente paddocks', and that same year José Pereira and his family opened the first general store. The official birthday of San Clemente del Tuyú is 23 November 1935, the day the surveyor Juan Marchese carried out the formal survey and marking of the first urban plots, on land donated by Federico Leloir to the Touring Club Argentino. It was the first subdivision in what was then the district of General Lavalle intended as a seaside resort.
Punta Rasa, on the northern edge of the town, is a site of enormous value: fresh water and salt water meet there, and it's a key point on the migratory routes of birds traveling between the northern hemisphere and Patagonia. Today it's a nature reserve protecting that unique ecosystem.
The big change for San Clemente came with the development of beach tourism over the 20th century. As mass seaside holidays took hold in Argentina — with Mar del Plata as the beacon — the northern Buenos Aires coast began to be subdivided and developed as an affordable destination for the growing middle class of Buenos Aires and its suburbs.
San Clemente del Tuyú thus ended up at the very start of what is known as the Costa Atlántica: it's the first resort town you reach coming from the north along Route 11, the gateway to the string of resorts that continues with Las Toninas, Santa Teresita, Mar del Tuyú, Costa del Este, Aguas Verdes, La Lucila del Mar, San Bernardo and Mar de Ajó, among others. Its growth was tied to seasonal family tourism.
In 1978 the Partido de la Costa was created, separating these towns from the old district of General Lavalle and giving them an administrative identity of their own, centered entirely on Atlantic coastal tourism. San Clemente established itself as one of the main towns of that new district.
The milestone that gave San Clemente del Tuyú national reach was the opening of Mundo Marino, inaugurated in the late 1970s. Conceived as an oceanarium and marine wildlife park, it became over time the largest oceanarium in Argentina and one of the largest in South America, with shows featuring orcas, dolphins, sea lions and penguins.
Mundo Marino transformed the local economy: the town stopped being only a family beach resort and gained an attraction capable of drawing visitors for much of the year, even outside the summer season. Generations of Argentine families saw the sea and marine wildlife for the first time on its grounds.
Over the decades, the institution took on a strong conservation and rescue component: the Fundación Mundo Marino specialized in rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing marine wildlife stranded on the Atlantic coast, from penguins to sea lions and turtles. So San Clemente's tourist icon also took on a scientific role and a part in protecting coastal wildlife.
Behind the shows and the stands at Mundo Marino, a less showy but far deeper story has been running for more than 40 years: the Provincial Center for the Rescue and Rehabilitation of Marine Wildlife, supported by the Fundación Mundo Marino. From its earliest years, the institution focused much of its effort on receiving and treating sick, oiled or stranded birds and marine mammals along the Buenos Aires Atlantic coast, long before the word 'sustainability' was part of the usual tourism vocabulary.
The fieldwork is constant: an equipped van covers more than 25,000 kilometers of beach a year, monitoring the coast and responding to calls from residents and lifeguards reporting stranded animals or animals in trouble. Over its history, the center has treated more than 10,500 wild animals, among them Magellanic penguins, sea lions, sea turtles and coastal birds. One of the most frequent cases is what's known as 'stranded penguin syndrome': juveniles on their first feeding migration that reach the coast underweight, dehydrated, anemic, hypothermic and heavily parasitized, from the hard business of learning to hunt at sea for the first time.
The rehabilitation process can take weeks or months of veterinary treatment, controlled feeding and observation before an animal is fit to return to the ocean. When that happens, the release becomes a small celebration for the team of vets, keepers, volunteers and students who took part: in 2026, for example, eleven Magellanic penguins were returned to the sea after months of recovery. This rescue side, barely visible to the visitor who comes only for the shows, is what gives Mundo Marino a role beyond entertainment: it makes it one of the most active marine wildlife conservation institutions in Argentina, with an impact reaching far beyond the park's 14 hectares.
Today San Clemente del Tuyú combines its profile as a family beach resort with an increasingly strong naturalist component. Besides Mundo Marino, the area offers the Punta Rasa Nature Reserve and the Bahía de Samborombón, paradises for watching migratory birds that draw birders from all over the country. The San Antonio lighthouse, at Punta Rasa, still marks the point where the river becomes the sea.
The town also has other attractions such as the Termas Marinas complex, with its theme park and viewpoint, and it keeps its broad beaches of calm water, ideal for families with children. Its location at the very start of the Costa Atlántica makes it a convenient base for exploring the other towns of the Partido de la Costa.
San Clemente's identity is built on three pillars: traditional beach tourism, the largest oceanarium in the country and an exceptional natural setting of wetlands and migratory birds. That mix of family fun and nature is what defines the destination today.