Argentina is the second-largest country in South America, and the eighth-largest in the world. It is also the highest and the lowest of the continent; at 6.960m Cerro Aconcagua is the tallest mountain in the whole American continent, while Salinas Chicas, at 40m below sea level, is the lowest point.
At the southern tip of Argentina there are several routes between the South Atlantic and the South Pacific Oceans including the Strait of Magellan, the Beagle Channel, and the Drake Passage as an alternative sailing around Cape Horn in the open ocean between South America and Antarctica.
The name Argentina derives from the Spanish word for silver, which is what early Spanish explorers sought when they first reached the region in the sixteenth century.