Arrival: Malargüe
Malargüe is a town whose size and character belie the scope of what surrounds it. Its population of roughly 30,000 is sustained now primarily by tourism and the legacy of petroleum and uranium extraction that defined its economy through much of the twentieth century; the oil infrastructure has largely wound down, but the regional museum on the main Avenida San Martín preserves that history alongside paleontology, archaeology, and the records of indigenous occupation going back to the late Pleistocene.
The department's name carries Huarpe origins — most plausibly from a word meaning "land of the dead," a reflection of the arid and seemingly empty landscape that the Huarpe and, later, the Pehuenche and Mapuche peoples occupied across centuries before the establishment of the Spanish fort at Malargüe in 1848. The town itself was formally constituted only in 1950; the Fiftieth Anniversary Tower on the main avenue, bearing a clock mechanism made in Mexico, was built to mark that centenary in 2000.
The Pierre Auger visitor centre, at the northern end of town on Avenida San Martín opposite the old Estancia La Orteguina, holds a guided tour at 5:00 pm on weekdays — a useful orientation if the timing aligns. The Malargüe Planetarium, in the centre of town, offers evening shows. The Parque del Ayer (Yesterday's Park), a small cedar and cypress grove a few blocks south on the same avenue, and the 1876 Molino Rufino Ortega — one of Argentina's first hydraulic mills, built in adobe with a wooden roof — are both easy walks. The town square was landscaped deliberately to evoke the volcanic geography of the surrounding region: its central feature simulates a volcanic crater in reference to the Puyún Matrú in the Payunia reserve to the south.
For dinner, the town's main strip offers parrillas and regional cooking; lamb is particularly associated with the south of Mendoza province, and the local estancias supply the better restaurants.