
La Cumbrecita is a typical German mountain town with wooden-framed chalets, hand-painted decorations and flower boxes overflowing with red blooms -- but it is a long way from Bavaria.

The town was built from scratch on barren hillside in Argentina's Sierras Grandes mountains southwest of Cordoba.

The village sprung up in traditional alpine style, with restaurants serving hearty goulash, sausages and schnitzel along with steins of German beer.

The town was founded by Helmut Cabjolsky, a Berliner who was working as a civil engineer for Siemens when he was transferred to Buenos Aires in 1932. He and his family yearned for the mountains of home.

They visited a friend's remote farm near Cordoba and fell in love with the area. Helmut bought 500 acres of barren land in 1934 and arranged for family members to come from Germany to help him build the town.

Helmut planted thousands of trees and sold plots of land to family and friends on condition they design their homes in the style of a Swiss, German or Austrian village.

"The little chapel, the style of the fountain, of the bridge at the entrance to the town. All of it could be in Central Europe. We even have a maypole," said Mayor Daniel Lopez, whose grandparents were living in the area when Cabjolsky was searching for a place to build a summer home.

It's still a small town, but there's a log-cabin spa, about two dozen restaurants serving a mix of German fare and Argentine cuisine, and guided hikes to the idyllic cascades along the crystalline Almbach River.

Beyond the forest lies a vast wilderness for adventurous tourists to explore on foot or by horseback.

There are ziplines and treetop walks through the forest canopy for extra adventures.

La Cumbrecita is Argentina's lone pedestrian-only town, one of several measures village leaders have implemented over the years to protect the environment.

The town is nearly self-sustaining, and relies almost completely on renewable energy, recycles all its water and composts nearly all of its organic waste.