Argentina
Los Gigantes
Red granite monoliths rising from the Córdoba sierras like the fingers of a buried colossus.
The granite spires of Los Gigantes in Córdoba Province rise 2,374 metres above the central Argentine landscape and have been visited by mountaineers for a century — but the rock walls above the Camino de Los Artesanos offer 600-metre multipitch routes that the international climbing press has been slow to discover, and the summit plateau above them looks out over a landscape of sierras and reservoirs with no development visible in any direction. The closest town is 100 kilometres from Córdoba city, and the approach trail from the base camp gains 600 metres through native montane forest.
Los Gigantes is a massif of the Sierras Grandes de Córdoba, a Precambrian metamorphic and granite complex at the highest point of the central Argentine sierras. The climbing routes on the main walls — the Pared de Los Gigantes — have been documented since the 1960s and span difficulty grades from Argentine 4th class to 7c+, with the most established routes following crack systems in the grey granite. The surrounding Pampa de Achala, a high plateau at 2,000+ metres surrounding the massif, supports an endemic ecosystem of bromeliads, native coiron grass, and the Córdoba condor roost — a year-round gathering of Andean condors that use the massif's thermal columns for soaring. The Quebrada del Condorito National Park, 40 kilometres south, is accessible from the same plateau road and protects the condor nesting cliffs.
Solo
The Los Gigantes single-pitch sport and trad routes in the lower formations are accessible to intermediate climbers with their own gear and a partner — the rock quality, the route variety, and the setting above the Pampa de Achala make for a day of climbing that remains genuinely undiscovered by the climbing tourist circuit.
Friends
A group camping at the base of Los Gigantes — multipitch climbing on the main wall, trail running on the pampa plateau, and condor watching from the summit — has the variety of a mountain area that has been used by Argentine climbers for sixty years and by international climbers for almost none.
- The granite monoliths reach 2,374m — the highest formation requires technical climbing gear to summit.
- The hiking approach from Camino de los Artesanos passes through a valley entirely free of habitation for 25km.
- Rock climbing routes from Grade III to Grade VI exist on the main monolith — governed by the Federación de Andinismo.
- Cloud catches on the peaks every afternoon — mornings are reliably clear and dry for technical ascents.
Cabrito a la llama and craft beer at a sierra refugio after the climb.
Fernet con coca — Córdoba's signature drink — mixed strong at a trailhead kiosk.
Pedra de Lume
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Float in a salt lake inside an extinct volcano, crater walls rising on every side.
Vale do Paúl
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Sugarcane terraces spill down a volcanic crater into the greenest valley in the archipelago.
Monastery of St. Anthony
Egypt
Earth's oldest inhabited monastery, wedged into a Red Sea mountain canyon since the fourth century.
Hoang Su Phi
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Rice terraces so vertiginous they look like topographical maps carved directly into the sky.
Casabindo
Argentina
Argentina's only bull ceremony strips ribbons from horns at 3,400 metres each August.
Parque Nacional Los Alerces
Argentina
Alerce trees 2,600 years old standing in forest unchanged since the last ice age.
Ischigualasto
Argentina
A moonscape where 230-million-year-old dinosaur bones scatter across wind-eroded clay mushrooms and stone cannonballs.
Esteros del Iberá
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Caiman drift among giant lily pads in a freshwater marsh where time itself pools and stills.