The Reserva Provincial Castillos de Pincheira ( es, Pincheira's Castles Provincial Reserve) is a natural area protected in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It's located about 27 km to the west of the

Malargüe Malargüe () is a city in the southwest part of province of Mendoza, Argentina, about 370 km south of the provincial capital Mendoza. It is the head town of the Malargüe Department, and it has about 27,000 inhabitants as per the . Overvie ...

city in the southern part of the

Mendoza Province Mendoza, officially Province of Mendoza, is a province of Argentina, in the western central part of the country in the Cuyo region. It borders San Juan to the north, La Pampa and Neuquén to the south, San Luis to the east, and the republic o ...

. It is a natural

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, his ...

sculpted by erosive actions, mainly of

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...

s. Its form is very similar to a giant

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

, in the front flow the

Malargüe River The Malargüe River (in Spanish: ''Río Malargüe'') is a river located in the southern zone of the Mendoza Province, in the west of Argentina. It originates in the Malargüe lake in the Andes range, at 2,500 m above mean sea level, flows into th ...

and very near the Pincheira

Stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

. According to the legend, this site was a refuge for the

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an bandits called Pincheira brothers, during the beginning of the 20th century. Around of the natural monument there are many arrows tips of the

Huarpes The Huarpes or Warpes are an indigenous people of Argentina, living in the Cuyo region. Some scholars assume that in the Huarpe language, this word means "sandy ground," but according to ''Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua general del Reino de Ch ...

, an ancient

ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

who inhabited the zone.

External links

Complejo Castillos de Pincheira

Protected areas of Mendoza Province

Castillos de Pincheira The Reserva Provincial Castillos de Pincheira ( es, Pincheira's Castles Provincial Reserve) is a nature reserve, natural area protected in Argentina. It's located about 27 km to the west of the Malargüe city in the southern part of the Mendoza Pr ...

Indigenous topics of the Southern Cone {{MendozaAR-geo-stub