Cascada Manqui Malal near Malargüe: a thirty-metre fall cutting fossil seabed under desert sky.

Reserva Natural Villavicencio: some 70,000 hectares of quebrada and high desert. The curves keep climbing.

Potrerillos is the Río Mendoza, paused. A green reservoir under the Cordón del Plata, still enough to paddle.

Near 3,300 m, Laguna del Diamante holds a hard blue under Volcán Maipo (5,323 m). Malargüe volcanic country.

Refugio Frey sits above Laguna Toncek. Granite spires. A classic Catedral approach from Bariloche.

The same Andes water that fills Potrerillos becomes rapids. Río Mendoza. Southern summer melt.

Start in Lago Moreno. Surface in Nahuel Huapi. Fifteen metres down, a channel joins two glacial lakes.

Cañón del Atuel: fifty kilometres of painted rock, walls to 260 metres. The river wrote it. The wind keeps editing.

America's highest mountain is a day from Horcones. You face the south wall without climbing it.

Circuito Chico: 60 km, two lakes, a viewpoint at 945 m over Lago Moreno. Summer paints the roadside rosehip red.