In the Iglesia department of Argentina’s San Juan province, at 200 km from the provincial capital along Ruta Nacional 150 — the final Argentine stretch of the Bioceanic Corridor linking Brazil, Argentina and Chile — a private project has been under construction, intermittently, since the early 2000s. Pampas del Cura, conceived as a self-contained thermal resort town at the foot of the Andes, is the most ambitious hospitality undertaking in a province that is only now beginning to position itself as a serious thermal tourism destination.
What Pampas del Cura is
The project covers 44 hectares in Las Flores, Iglesia department, and is designed as an integrated thermal, ecological, rural, wine and adventure tourism destination. The development combines a hotel, restaurant, thermal spa, recreational areas, vineyards, country houses and activities ranging from adventure tourism to astronomical observation.
Of the 40 hectares of the site, 18 are allocated to the tourism complex and 22 reserved for residential plots, which explains its designation as a “pueblo” — a thermal village rather than a conventional resort. The target is 80 private country houses on individually sold plots, supplemented by the hotel and public facilities.
The hotel will offer 100 rooms with a thermal spa fed by springs at 33°C, recognised for their mineral properties, alongside a regional restaurant, a wine cellar featuring regional varieties, and a Plaza del Cielo — a dedicated space for astronomical observation. The complex includes a tennis court, stables, a helipuerto certified by the Argentine Air Force, and a 15-hectare Malbec vineyard with a boutique bodega. An artificial lake at the centre of the grounds serves both as a landscape feature and as the primary irrigation source for the estate’s 100,000 trees and vines.
The thermal spa has an outdoor pool lined entirely in mosaic tile, fed by the spring at its natural temperature of 33–34°C. The indoor facility includes a 10-metre circular hydrotherapy pool with capacity for 20 simultaneous users, a relaxation area, gym and changing rooms.
The designers and developers
The project was conceived and is owned by brothers Eduardo and Raúl Jaime, who began work on the site more than 20 years ago. The design is by architect Héctor Muñoz Daract, who described the brief as unique in his career — complete creative freedom with no budget constraints. The entire architecture is organised around framed views of the Andean landscape, with five distinct courtyard spaces — the Arrival, Market, Museum, Main and Conference courts — arranged beneath an elevated roof garden.
The Jaime brothers formally presented the project to the San Juan provincial government in 2016, with then-Governor Sergio Uñac in attendance alongside ministers, lawmakers and the mayor of Iglesia. At the same event, architect Muñoz Daract noted that 80% of the construction workforce is drawn from the local Iglesian community.
Where it stands and what surrounds it
As of late 2023, San Juan’s provincial tourism authorities were describing Pampas del Cura as already offering some services to visitors and on the verge of full operation, forming part of a trio of new thermal hotel projects in the province alongside the refurbished Termas Pismanta Hotel and the newly constructed Termas de La Laja in Albardón — a three-site thermal cluster that San Juan is positioning as a regional first.
As of July 2025, Pampas del Cura was still described in Argentine travel media as a forthcoming project rather than an operating resort, with no confirmed full opening date publicly announced.
The location is not incidental to the project’s appeal. The site sits on Ruta Nacional 150, in the final stretch of the Central Bioceanic Corridor connecting Brazil, Argentina and Chile — a positioning that gives it potential reach into cross-border travel circuits that pass through the Andes. The Iglesia department is also notable for its night skies: the region’s altitude and arid clarity make it one of Argentina’s prime astronomical observation zones, a quality the Plaza del Cielo is explicitly designed to exploit.
San Juan’s thermal potential has long been overshadowed by Mendoza wine tourism to the south and Patagonian adventure travel further below. Pampas del Cura, if it reaches full operation, would offer something more unusual: a resort in the high Andean desert that combines thermal bathing, stargazing, wine, llamas and a 10-metre concrete guanaco — a combination that exists nowhere else.