Nahuel Huapi

Its origin goes back to 1 February 1904, when the explorer and surveyor Francisco Pascasio Moreno gave the Argentine state 7,500 hectares beside Lake Nahuel Huapi that the government had granted him in payment for his work marking out the border with Chile, on the express condition that they be kept in their natural state for public use. That gift formally became Nahuel Huapi National Park in 1934, the first in Argentina and in the whole of South America, laying the foundation of the country's present national park system. Its name means island of the tiger in Mapudungun, after the puma the indigenous peoples called a tiger, and its Andean-Patagonian forests, dotted with turquoise glacial lakes, gave rise to the town of San Carlos de Bariloche as its main gateway.