Qualla: Los Arrayanes National Park

Los Arrayanes National Park: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Run your hand along the bark and it is cold to the touch, even in summer - smooth, peeling, the color of cinnamon and dried blood. These are the arrayanes, a flowering myrtle so unusual that Argentina carved a whole national park out of a larger one just to protect them. Los Arrayanes National Park occupies the Quetrihué Peninsula, a finger of land reaching into Lake Nahuel Huapi, where thousands of these trees crowd together so densely they leave little room for anything else. The grove is one of the few mature arrayán forests left on Earth.

Los Arrayanes National Park: A Forest Worth Its Own Park

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For decades this peninsula was simply a corner of the vast Nahuel Huapi National Park, easy to overlook among so many lakes and peaks. In 1971 that changed: authorities carved out a 1,750-hectare section and made it a park in its own right, a deliberate act to focus attention and...

Los Arrayanes National Park: The Tree Itself

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Luma apiculata is its scientific name, and everything about it feels slightly otherworldly. The cinnamon-red bark stays cool because it is rich in tannins; when it flakes away it reveals pale, ghostly patches beneath, so a grove of arrayanes seems dappled and luminous even in sha...

Los Arrayanes National Park: The Bambi Legend

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A persistent local story claims Walt Disney wandered this forest and found in it the look of the woodland in his 1942 film Bambi - there is even a cabin known as Bambi's House along the trail. It is a lovely tale, and it is not true. Disney's South American trip came in early 194...

Los Arrayanes National Park: Small Creatures, Big Sky

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The wildlife here runs to the miniature and the secretive. The pudú, one of the world's smallest deer, slips through the undergrowth, while the larger huemul keeps to country nearer Villa la Angostura. There are foxes, and the elusive monito del monte - despite its name not a mon...