In Europe it seems like everywhere there's flat water, there's recreational and competitive rowing. The English have been rowing on the Thames for centuries.

—Doggett Coat Badge. Thomas Rowlandson

Argentina is more European than Latin American, and it has lots of flat water. So it should come as no surprise that Argentineans row. What is surprising is the ubiquity of rowers: you see them everywhere.

A couple of lunch-hour boatsmen work out in a dique at Puerto Madero in downtown Buenos Aires.

The compulsive (and wealthy) build elaborate rowing clubs. Club Regata Mendoza is located in parched Parque San Martín. The founders built a severely rectangular lake large enough for racing. The building and lake represent serious money.

You've got to really care to go to such lengths.

Apparently membership in Club Regata Mendoza is countrywide. This woman is walking through an outdoor mercado in Buenos Aires.

I'm not sure her outfit is what serious rowers wear. When I looked up rowing gear, I found a reference to kidney warmers, "best worn next to the skin." I group kidney warmers right next to trekking poles. Whatever happened to just getting out and rowing? Or walking? In, like, sneakers and jeans?

El Tigre is loaded with rowers paddling through the center of town, on a tributary of the Río Luján.

Some are members of one of the town's many rowing clubs. Argentina's first, the Buenos Aires Rowing Club, was built here in 1873. It still exists, the acme of rowing clubs. I probably wouldn't be invited to join. El Guapo certainly wouldn't.

Owners keep their boats in palatial boathouses like this one at Club Canottieri Italiani—The Italian Rower's Club.

Riverbanks in El Tigre are public spaces with few private buildings permitted. Boathouses and rowing clubs are located across the street. Your better rowing clubs have installed trolley tracks for transporting boats down to the river.

These hand-built wooden boats are high art. Hull shapes have been honed over centuries with small, incremental improvements. Cross sections are shaped so that as the boat tips, resistance to tipping further increases. Hulls are widest aft of center, helping keep the boat pointed forward. And the woodwork! The craftsmanship is incredible.

Up in the Paraná Delta a rower enjoys quiet water. Her boat belongs to an era long past. Her oars are the latest in rowing technology: hatchet sculls made from carbon fiber composites.

Here's a dream: Buy an apartment in a belle époque building in a nice neighborhood like Palermo. It'll cost you less than a house in San Miguel de Allende. With the leftover money, buy a weekend home in the Paraná Delta. Join a mid-level rowing club. Enjoy a peaceful, elegant sport while getting in shape. European living at its best—but here affordable, and with a decent climate.