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Big, busy and brash, MAR DEL PLATA towers above all other resorts on Argentina's Atlantic coast. Around three million tourists holiday here every summer, drawn by the familiar charms of its busy beaches and lively entertainment. If the thought of queuing for a restaurant makes you shudder, Mar del Plata in the height of summer is best avoided, but if you prefer to mix your sunbathing and swimming with a spot of culture, nightlife or shopping, you'll probably find it one of Argentina's most appealing resorts. Despite some haphazard development, Mar del Plata is a solid and attractive city, favoured by the gentle drama of a sweeping coastline and hilly terrain and while its rather urban beaches may lack the wild charm of less developed strips of sand, they are fun places to hang out - good for a spot of people-watching as well as swimming and sunbathing. Mar del Plata is also the only resort really worth visiting out of season: while the city may breathe a sigh of relief when the last of the tourists leave at the end of the summer, it certainly doesn't close down - Mar del Plata has just over 500,000 inhabitants and its port is one of Argentina's most important. The town was founded by Patricio Peralta Ramos in 1874, but it was Pedro Luro, a Basque merchant, who had the idea of turning the growing town into a European-style bathing resort three years later. As the railway began to expand into the province, previously isolated settlements such as Mar del Plata became accessible to visitors from the capital; the first passenger train arrived here from Buenos Aires in September of 1886. The subsequent opening of the town's first hotel - the luxurious Hotel Bristol - in 1888 was a great occasion for the Buenos Aires elite, many of whom travelled down for the opening on an overnight train. The town's initial success aside, the richest of Argentina's very rich continued to make their regular pilgrimages to Europe. It took the outbreak of war in Europe to dampen Argentine enthusiasm for the journey across the Atlantic and to establish Mar del Plata as an exclusive resort. Mass tourism began to arrive in the 1930s, helped by improved roads, but took off in the 1940s and 1950s, with the development of union-run hotels under Peron finally putting Mar del Plata within the reach of Argentina's middle and working classes. In the rush to reap maximum benefit from the resort's meteoric rise, laws were passed that allowed high-rise construction and led to the demolition of many of Mar del Plata's most traditional buildings. Today, with the notable exception of its landmark casino and Grand Hotel Provincial , the resort's coastline is dominated by modern high-rise developments. This uneasy mix makes for a weird and wonderful place: scattered here and there are quirky buildings, built in a decorative - even fantastical - style, known as pintoresco, an eclectic brew of mostly Norman and Tudor architecture. Indeed, in many ways this is still an intriguingly old-fashioned place, where people eagerly attend the latest show or queue patiently to go to a favourite restaurant and return, year after year, to the same hotel and the same beach tent. Above all, it's a place where people go to have fun, and it would be hard not to be affected by the atmosphere. Away from the beaches, Mar del Plata has a number of modest but interesting museums and galleries : notably the charming Villa Victoria - an elegant wooden building once owned by Victoria Ocampo, one of Argentina's most famous writers, and now housing the city's cultural centre. The bustling port area is also worth a visit, not only for its colourful traditional fishing boats, but for a close encounter with the area's noisy colony of sea lions. If you're just looking for a spot of good living, Mar del Plata has some excellent bars and restaurants and -at the height of the summer - a non-stop nightlife. South of Mar del Plata, the RP11 continues through a subdued landscape where wooded reddish-brown cliffs slope down to the creamy aquamarine waters of the Atlantic and arrives, after 40km, at the popular family resort of Miramar . The Interbalnearia finally peters out at the small and appealingly sleepy village of Mar del Sud .
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