Argentina
Parque Nacional Perito Moreno
Argentina's emptiest national park: turquoise lakes, Andean steppe, and days without another soul.
Parque Nacional Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province shares only its name with the famous glacier — it is a completely different place, 600 kilometres to the northwest, without paved roads, without facilities, and with fewer than 500 visitors a year. The park contains twelve glacial lakes connected by rivers through sub-Antarctic lenga beech and ñire forests, with guanacos, pumas, and Andean condors visible throughout — and the near-total absence of visitors means the wildlife behaves as it does in a park where no human has given it reason to be cautious.
Parque Nacional Perito Moreno covers 115,000 hectares in the Patagonian Andes of Santa Cruz Province, established in 1937 as one of Argentina's first national parks, and remains one of its least visited due to the absence of any paved road access. The park protects a landscape of glacial lakes — including Lago Belgrano, the park's largest — and the transition zone between Patagonian steppe and Andean forest, one of the most ecologically significant interfaces in South America. The park's puma population is among the most visible in the country — the absence of human disturbance over decades has reduced the animals' wariness to the point where midday encounters on the trail are not exceptional. The twelve-kilometre Cóndor trail along the ridge above Lago Belgrano provides panoramic views over five glacier-fed lakes visible simultaneously.
Solo
Parque Nacional Perito Moreno is the experience that travellers who have done the rest of Patagonia go looking for next — the one without the crowds, without the branded experience, without the infrastructure that mediates between you and the landscape. The logistics are genuine: camping, self-sufficiency, and the occasional puma at close range.
- The park receives fewer than 2,000 visitors per year — one of the least-visited national parks in Patagonia.
- The trail network requires multi-day self-sufficiency — no refugios, no services beyond the entrance.
- Lago Belgrano and Lago Burmeister are accessible only on foot or horseback after entering the park.
- Flamingos breed in the salt lake at Laguna Colorada inside the park — pink colonies visible from the circuit trail.
Self-catered camping — dried meats, pasta, and mate — cooked in the silence of empty steppe.
Cordero and empanadas at a remote estancia on the approach road from Bajo Caracoles.
Cirque de Navacelles
France
A natural amphitheatre where a river abandoned its own meander, leaving a village below.
Soutpansberg
South Africa
Africa's most biodiverse mountain hides in the far north — baobabs, sacred forests, no tourist trail.
Aït Mansour Gorge
Morocco
A palm-filled slot canyon where water trickles past painted Berber villages in the Anti-Atlas.
Douro Internacional
Portugal
A 200-metre canyon slicing the Portugal-Spain border where griffon vultures outnumber the humans.
Bañado La Estrella
Argentina
Dead trees standing in still floodwater like a drowned forest, Argentina's forgotten Chaco wetland.
El Impenetrable
Argentina
Thorn forest so dense it stopped colonial armies, now sheltering jaguars in Argentina's wildest Chaco.
Parque Nacional El Rey
Argentina
A cloud forest fills a natural amphitheatre where 300 bird species outnumber yearly visitors.
Salinas Grandes
Argentina
A salt flat so white it dissolves the horizon, cracking into hexagonal tiles beneath bare feet.