Long before he published The Little Prince, Aintoine Saint-Exupéry worked in Argentina. He drew airline routes connecting Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Asunción and Patagonia’s post offices.
In January 1930 as he was flying from Buenos Aires to Asuncion in his small aircraft, a technical malfunction forced him to land (just like in The Little Prince). He landed in a field, close to a castle, in Concordia, Entre Rios.
San Carlos Castle
To his dismay, two little girls approached him. They both spoke French and invited him to meet their family; they lived in the San Carlos castle. He stayed with them for three days until his aircraft was fixed. Saint-Exupéry tells how this happened in the chapter Oasis from the book Tierra de Hombres, saying: “I had landed on a field and I didn’t know I was going to live a fairy tale. It was in a field near Concordia in Argentina”. He returned many times to that place to visit his new friends.
San Carlos Castle
The family left the castle in 1935. After that it was looted and now only ruins remain. But it still has its magic and it’s worth to visit it. There you can also see a statue of The Little Prince on his asteroid.