Argentine Patagonia - Santa Cruz, Argentina

El Calafate is a city in Patagonia, Argentina. It is situated in the southern border of Lake Argentino, in the southwest part of the Santa Cruz Province, about 320 km Northwest of Río Gallegos. Its name is derived from a little bush with yellow flowers and dark blue berries that is very common in Patagonia: the calafate (Berberis buxifolia); the word comes from the word "calafate", which is Spanish for "caulk".

El Calafate is an important tourist destination as the hub to visit different parts of the Los Glaciares National Park, including the Perito Moreno Glacier and the Cerro Chaltén and Cerro Torre.

Patagonia is a region located at the southern end of South America, shared by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the mountain range to the valleys it follows the Colorado River south towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it includes the territory of Valdivia through Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

The name Patagonia comes from the word patagón used by Magellan in 1520 to describe the native people that his expedition thought to be giants. It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 180 cm (~5′11″) compared to the 155 cm (~5′1″) average for Europeans of the time.

The Argentine portion of Patagonia includes the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, as well as the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego archipelago and the southernmost department of Buenos Aires province: Patagones. The Argentine politico-economic Patagonic Region includes the Province of La Pampa.

The geography of Argentina describes the geographic features of Argentina, a country located in southern South America (or Southern Cone). Bordered by the Andes in the west and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, neighboring countries are Chile to the west, Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, and Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast.

In terms of area, Argentina is the second largest country of South America after Brazil, and the 8th largest country in the world. Its total area is approximately 2.7 million km². Argentina claims a section of Antarctica (Argentine Antarctica) but has agreed to suspend sovereignty disputes in the region as a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty. Argentina also asserts claims to several South Atlantic islands administered by the United Kingdom.

With a population of more than 42.1 million, Argentina ranks as the world's 32nd most populous country as of 2010.

Santa Cruz (Spanish pronunciation: [santa ˈkɾus]) is a province of Argentina, located in the southern part of the country, in Patagonia. It borders Chubut province to the north, and Chile to the west and south, with an Atlantic coast on its east. Santa Cruz is the second-largest province of the country (after Buenos Aires province), and the least densely populated in mainland Argentina.

The indigenous people of the province are the Tehuelches, who despite European exploration from the 16th century onwards, retained independence until the late 19th century. Soon after the Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s, the area was organised as the Territory of Santa Cruz, named after its original capital in Puerto Santa Cruz. The capital moved to Rio Gallegos in 1888 and has remained there ever since. Immigrants from various European countries came to the territory in the late 19th and early 20th century during a gold rush. Santa Cruz became a province of Argentina in 1957.

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Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is the second largest country in both South America and the Latin America region.

The country is a federation of 23 provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires, its capital and largest city. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations by geographical area of 2,780,400 km2 and is the fourth by population, with over 41 million people. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.

Southern Cone (Spanish: Cono Sur, Portuguese: Cone Sul) is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes Southern and part of Southeast (São Paulo) of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. In the narrowest sense, it only covers Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, bounded on the north by the states of Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, on the west by the Pacific Ocean, and south to the junction between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, which it is the closest continental area of Antarctica (1000 km).

High life expectancy, the highest Human Development Index of Latin America, high Standard of living, significant participation in the global markets and the emerging economy of its members make the Southern Cone the most prosperous macro-region in South America.