Canada
Waterfalls on a volcanic scale pour through a park most itineraries still miss.
Helmcken drops into its own enormous bowl of spray and moss. Down the road, another falls waits with almost nobody watching.
Wells Gray stacks waterfalls, Helmcken's great plunge among dozens, across volcanic plateaux and paddle-country lakes. Clearwater is the gateway with a smokehouse the tourism board rates the country's best, and even a trailhead concession selling Belgian waffles. The park absorbs crowds into sheer space.
Couple
Falls corridor by day, Clearwater smokehouse by night.
Solo
Sequenced waterfalls give a solo drive natural chapters.
Friends
Paddle crews take the lakes while walkers take the brinks.
Clearwater's Hop N' Hog smokes its meats slow; the tourism board calls it Canada's best smokehouse.
Even Spahats Falls' trailhead stand sells Belgian waffles.

Baviaanskloof
South Africa
A rough road threads folded mountains, river crossings and farms through a hundred-mile valley.

Glaskogen Nature Reserve
Sweden
Eighty lakes threaded by canoe routes through Värmland's silent forest.

Namosi Highlands
Fiji
Bamboo rafts still run the cold green rivers under Namosi's cloud-hung jungle walls.

Peneda-Gerês
Portugal
Portugal's only national park — granite canyons, wild horses, Roman milestones on lost paths.

Icefields Parkway
Canada
Two hundred and thirty glacier-hung kilometres link Banff to Jasper along the spine of the Rockies.

Cape Breton Highlands
Canada
From the Skyline Trail's cliff decks you watch for whales; moose live on the plateau behind.

Athabasca Glacier
Canada
A tongue of the Columbia Icefield lies close enough to touch, and visibly leaving.

Churchill River
Canada
A voyageur highway of lakes and granite still runs its canoe routes through the boreal north.