Santa Catalina

One of the most beautiful of the Sierras' Unesco World Heritage Sites, the Jesuit estancia (ranch) of Santa Catalina, some 20km northwest of Jesús María, is a quiet, tiny place, where the village store occupies part of the estancia, and old-timers sit on the benches outside and watch the occasional gaucho ride past on a horse. Much of the estancia is off-limits to visitors but you can take in the chapel, cloisters and novitiate, where unmarried slave girls were housed.