Photo Essay Photo Essay

Photographer: Unspecified Photographer

Argentina: Introduction

Argentina forms the eastern half of South America's long, tapering tail. It's a big country - the eighth largest in the world, and the second largest on the South American continent. Argentina's topography is affected by both latitude and altitude, and is accordingly varied. The country can be divided into four major physiographic provinces: the Andes to the west (with arid basins, grape-filled foothills, glacial mountains and the Lake District), the fertile lowland north (with subtropical rainforests), the central Pampas (a flat mix of humid and dry expanses) and Patagonia (a combination of pastoral steppes and glacial regions). More than twenty national parks preserve large areas of these varied environments and protect wildlife (much of it unique) and ecosystems that contain thorn forests, virgin rainforests, flowering cacti, extensive forests of monkey-puzzle trees and southern beech.
The following photographs were taken in extreme northern Argentina in an area broadly known as the Chaco. This parched area in the west is part of the enormous Gran Chaco, a region that Argentina shares with Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. The Chaco contains both grassland and thorny forest.
[Introduction and map from Lonely Planet: www.lonelyplanet.com/]