Las Grutas cliff-top apartment

Las Grutas is a geographical fluke. The Golfo San Matias is a huge, almost enclosed bay that traps summer heat, so the sea here reaches twenty-four degrees — warmer than anywhere else on the Argentine coast, and warmer than Mar del Plata a thousand kilometres north. The town sits on ochre-orange cliffs pocked with the caves that give it its name, with wooden staircases dropping to a beach of clean pale sand and genuinely turquoise water.

The apartment is a seventy square metre unit on the second floor of a low block a couple of streets from the cliff edge: two bedrooms, one bathroom, an open living-kitchen, a balcony with a sea glimpse and a laundry. Tiled floors, gas heating, double glazing against the Patagonian wind, a lift and a parking space. Two hundred metres to the nearest staircase down to the beach and five minutes' walk to the main avenue.

The tide here has a range of nine metres, so the beach transforms twice a day — vast flats of ribbed sand and rock pools at low water, a narrow strip below the cliffs at high. Locals plan their day around the tide table, and it is worth learning: low tide is for walking to the caves and collecting shells, high tide for swimming off the sand.

San Antonio Oeste, fifteen minutes inland, has the hospital, supermarkets, bus terminal and administration, while Las Grutas itself has the restaurants, ice-cream shops, cabanas and a summer population that swells enormously in January. Out of season it is very quiet. San Antonio Oeste airport takes summer flights and Viedma is two and a half hours; Bariloche and the lakes are a long but spectacular drive west.

This is Patagonia's beach resort, priced in dollars and cheap by any comparison — a coastal apartment for the price of a car. Purchase goes through an escribano who verifies title and issues the escritura; foreigners buy freely and closing costs run to a few per cent. Buy it for warm swimming water in a landscape of cliffs, guanacos and enormous skies, with whales, sea lions and Peninsula Valdes a few hours south.