Buenos Aires, Ushuaia and El Calafate: City to Perito Moreno, 7 Nights

A driver meets you after customs and takes you into the city, a drive of around an hour from the international airport depending on traffic. The rest of the day is yours to recover from the long journey. A slow walk in the neighbourhood around the hotel is the best start: Buenos Aires eats late, so a coffee and a pastry in a corner café will carry you well into the evening before the dining rooms fill.

A half-day guided tour takes in the broad Avenida 9 de Julio and the Teatro Colón, then Avenida de Mayo to the square where the pink Casa Rosada faces the cathedral and the old colonial town hall. In La Boca the tin-fronted houses of Caminito are painted in bright blocks of colour, and the tour finishes in Recoleta among grand townhouses and boutiques. The afternoon is free. The evening is the traditional time for a tango show with dinner, a proper introduction to the dance, which we can arrange at extra cost.

After breakfast a driver takes you to the airport for the flight south; domestic flights often use the city airport rather than the international one, and we confirm which when we book. Ushuaia sits on the Beagle Channel with snow-streaked mountains close behind, among the southernmost towns on earth. You are met on arrival and taken to the hotel. Spend the evening on the waterfront or along Avenida San Martín, where king crab is the local speciality.

A half-day guided tour into Tierra del Fuego National Park, a short drive west of town, where southern beech forest meets lakes, peat bogs and the sea. The tour stops at viewpoints over Bahía Lapataia, where the national Route 3 ends, and gives time for short walks along the shore. The afternoon is free. The most popular addition is a boat trip on the Beagle Channel past sea-lion and cormorant islands and the red-and-white lighthouse; we can book it for you.

Transfer to Ushuaia airport for the flight north to El Calafate, which crosses some of the emptiest country in Patagonia. On arrival you are met and driven into town, a small place on the southern shore of Lago Argentino with a main street of outdoor shops, chocolate makers and grill restaurants. Walk down to the lakeside reserve at Laguna Nimez in the long evening light, where flamingos and upland geese are often seen.

The day the trip is built around. The coach drives west into Los Glaciares National Park, and after a stretch of lakeside forest the glacier appears all at once: a wall of blue-white ice rising from the water and running back into the mountains. A boat along the face for the close view can be added. Then comes time on the network of walkways opposite the front, where you can wait for the crack and roar of ice breaking away. Bring layers; the wind off the ice is cold even in summer.

Nothing is booked. The popular choice is a long optional day to El Chaltén, a village about three hours north beneath the granite spires of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, with short walks to viewpoints if the cloud lifts. If you would rather stay close, the Glaciarium museum explains how the ice fields formed, and the town has good lamb and craft beer for a last Patagonian dinner.

Breakfast at the hotel, then a driver takes you to El Calafate airport for your flight onward, which usually connects through Buenos Aires for the long journey home. If the connection allows, a night back in Buenos Aires before flying out is easy to add, and it takes the pressure off the transfer between the city airport and the international one.