🇦🇷 Argentina · Cuyo
The Villavicencio Nature Reserve is a protected area in the Mendoza precordillera, about 50 km from the provincial capital, famous for the iconic Hotel Termas Villavicencio — the one on the mineral water label — and for the spectacular Camino del Año, the old cliffside road that climbs towards Uspallata through countless switchbacks. It brings together historic heritage, mountain nature and the source of one of the best-known waters in the country.
The reserve protects a valuable mountain environment, with native flora and fauna (condors, guanacos, foxes), wet meadows and springs, set in the precordillera. The old, elegant Hotel Termas Villavicencio, now closed as a hotel but restored as a heritage site, is the heart of the place, along with its chapel, its gardens and the visitor center that tells the story of the water and the area.
This guide covers the essentials of Villavicencio: the historic hotel complex and the springs, the Camino del Año (the road of 365 curves) up to the Monumento al Cristo or on to Uspallata, the reserve's trails and wildlife watching, tips for the visit and how to get there from Mendoza. A classic outing that combines history, landscape and nature.
Villavicencio owes its fame to its mineral water springs and to the elegant Hotel Termas, opened in 1940, which became a symbol thanks to the label of the water that carries its name. The area, a historic mountain crossing towards Chile along the Camino del Año, was protected as a private nature reserve in 2000 to conserve the precordillera environment, its wildlife and its heritage.
Read the full history ↓The land of sun and good wine: a Huarpe oasis at the foot of Aconcagua, cradle of San Martín's Army of the Andes, rebuilt after the 1861 earthquake and turned into the world capital of Malbec and the high mountains.
Read the history of Mendoza →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Millions of Argentines have an image of Villavicencio on their table without ever having set foot there: the mountain hotel on the label of the country's most famous mineral water really exists, and it stands in the Mendoza precordillera, 50 km from the provincial capital. Long before that bottled fame, the Villavicencio area was for centuries a mountain crossing on the route linking Mendoza with Chile and with the north. Muleteers, travellers and, at different moments, armies passed through these arid, broken landscapes, making use of the springs that surfaced in the middle of the dryness. Villavicencio water was, from early on, a valuable resource for anyone crossing the precordillera.
The most famous trace of that old role as a crossing is the Camino del Año, the vertiginous cliffside road that climbs from Villavicencio towards Uspallata. Popularly known as the road of 365 curves — one for each day of the year — it was for a long time the main mountain link to the west, before more modern and direct roads were built. Its route, narrow and full of cliffside bends, climbs between the hills with striking panoramas.
This historic road is part of the epic of the Mendoza mountains and of the routes that, at different times, connected Argentina with Chile. Today, travelled by tourists and adventurers, it keeps the flavour of those journeys of old, when crossing the precordillera was a slow and demanding undertaking. It is also one of the great attractions of today's Villavicencio Reserve, which combines that historical value with the conservation of nature.
The great modern landmark of Villavicencio is its elegant Hotel Termas, a Norman-style establishment opened in the first half of the 20th century, at the height of the boom in spa and mountain tourism. Set in a spectacular precordillera landscape, with its terraced gardens, its chapel and its facilities, the hotel became a prestigious destination and a symbol of Mendoza tourism of the period, frequented by visitors looking for rest, mountain air and the properties of its waters.
The fame of the place became tied forever to Villavicencio mineral water, one of the best-known water brands in Argentina, whose label reproduces the image of the hotel itself. The springs and sources of the precordillera, with water surfacing after a long underground journey, gave rise to this emblematic product, and the image of the hotel on the label turned Villavicencio into a household name across the country, far beyond those who knew the place in person.
In time the hotel stopped operating as such, but its heritage value led to its recovery and restoration. The historic complex — hotel, chapel, gardens and springs — survives as testimony to that golden age and as the central attraction of the reserve. Visiting it is a way into the history of mountain tourism in Mendoza and of the water that made the name Villavicencio famous.
Beyond its historic heritage, the setting of Villavicencio takes in a vast stretch of precordillera of great natural value. To protect it, in 2000 the Villavicencio Nature Reserve was created (Resolution 1065 of the Directorate of Renewable Natural Resources of Mendoza), a private reserve of more than 60,000 hectares covering three environments — Monte, Cardonal and Puna — which was also recognized as a Ramsar site for its high-altitude wetlands. It conserves flora adapted to the dry climate, the springs and wet meadows, and wildlife in which Andean condors, guanacos, foxes and numerous birds stand out, aiming to reconcile conservation, research and responsible tourism.
The Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds in the world, is one of the emblems of the reserve: it crosses the skies of the precordillera and can be watched gliding over the hills, which makes Villavicencio a good place to spot it. Protecting this and other animals, along with the landscape and the water sources, is one of the central aims of the protected area.
Today the Villavicencio Reserve is one of the classic day trips from the city of Mendoza: in a single day you can combine a walk through the historic hotel complex and the springs, hikes along the precordillera trails, wildlife watching and, for the more adventurous, the drive along the Camino del Año to Uspallata. A destination that brings together, in one place, the memory of mountain tourism, the story of the mineral water and the conservation of Mendoza's nature.
The road that climbs to Villavicencio holds a decisive chapter of Argentine history. In January 1817, when José de San Martín organized the Crossing of the Andes to liberate Chile, the Army of the Andes did not cross the mountains through a single pass but split into several columns to confuse the enemy and attack on different fronts. At the place known as Canota, on the road to Villavicencio and Uspallata, columns separated and took different directions towards the Andean passes.
Because of its geography, this part of the precordillera was one of the natural gateways out to the west. Troops, mountain scouts and muleteers who knew the secrets of the mountains passed through here, in one of the boldest logistical operations in South American history. The monument that recalls that event at Canota today is a regular stop on the tours that climb to Villavicencio, and it links the arid, silent landscape of the precordillera with the liberation campaign.
That San Martín legacy adds to the value of the Camino del Año as a historic route of communication with Chile. Travelling these places today means following, as a visitor, the same paths on which part of the continent's independence was decided, among hills, gorges and springs that have barely changed.
Behind the famous Hotel Termas de Villavicencio there is a little-known personal story. In 1923 the cattle rancher Ángel Velaz, a member of the Sociedad Rural Argentina, bought the land around the springs with the idea of developing a spa venture on a par with the great European resorts of the day. Almost two decades would pass before that project took shape in the building everyone recognizes today.
The final hotel was designed by the prestigious Buenos Aires practice of the architects Sánchez, Lagos and De la Torre, with construction supervised by the engineer Raúl Dubecq, while the design of the parks and terraced gardens was left to the landscape architects Neira and Ezcurra. What is astonishing is the speed of the build: the imposing Alpine-Norman-style building, set at 1,750 meters above sea level, went up in barely six months, a breakneck pace for the time that says a great deal about the effort put into the work. The hotel opened its doors in 1940 and immediately became an icon of high-altitude tourism in Mendoza.
Ángel Velaz did not get to enjoy the fruit of his effort for long: he died in 1943 inside the very Gran Hotel he had driven forward, barely three years after it opened. The establishment kept running for several more decades, until it closed in 1979, shortly after the 1978 Football World Cup. After years of abandonment, the building went through a heritage restoration that returned it to its splendour as a place to visit, although it never recovered its original role as accommodation.