Tinogasta is a city in the west of the , on the right-hand shore of the Abaucán River

Abaucán River

The Abaucán is a river in Argentina which flows through the provinces of Catamarca and La Rioja, areas with very low precipitation.It begins in the north of the Tinogasta Department of Catamarca Province, at the confluence of several rivers created by the melting of snow and precipitation in the...

, about 280 km from the provincial capital San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca

San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca

San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca is a city in northwestern Argentina and capital of Catamarca Province, on the Río Valle River, at the feet of the Cerro Ambato....

. It has about 14,500 inhabitants as of the . It is the head town of the department

Departments of Argentina

Departments form the second level of administrative division in the provinces of Argentina. There are no departments in the city of Buenos Aires, which has so far been divided into neighbourhoods as its administrative divisions, but is to be divided now into communes by a recently passed local act...

 of the same name. The name of the city comes from the Kakana words tino "meeting" and gasta "town".

Tinogasta is a touristic site. It has access to the mountains for adventure tourism, hot spring

Hot spring

A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...

s, and archaeological museums. The basis of the local economy is agriculture, focused on vine

Vine

A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...

.