RIO GALLEGOS (CAPITAL)

• Height above sea level: 16 mt
• Population: 79,000 inhabitants
• Distance from Buenos Aires city: 2,612 km
• Length of flight: 3 hs 15 mins
• Distance from local airport: 8 km
• Date of Foundation: 1885

This city, standing beside the river that gives it its name, is bustling with commercial activity, as well as being an important military and navy base. One of the city's most remarkable activities is its cold storage plants devoted to the slaughtering of sheep cattle. Its climate is temperate, desert-like, and with notorious thermical amplitude.

Rio Gallegos has a great variety of hotels, deep-water ports and an international airport with intense air traffic of interpolar flights and in contact with Antarctica. The river, flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, attracts sport fishing fans interested in catching big trout, which of course are a distinctive element in this region's cuisine, as well as lamb and shellfish.