Trip for a walk that overcomes the river Malargüe to find legendary natural formations that were the feared highwaymen's pincheirinos refuge.

Circuit of 50 round trip km from Malargüe, for a consolidated road. Walks for minimum half-day, capable in all season, avoiding to traffic during the rains that make dangerous the badenes. Take picnic.

Leave Malargüe (km 0) for the Av. Outpost Malargüe toward the west. It will cross the main channel of watering that brings water of the dike, located 8 km to the south. Then, will come closer to the cerrillada crossing cultivated lands, protected by trenches of poplars of the Forest Nursery that it acts as cortavientos. will be able to enjoy of an I magnify landscape, with first plane forestados and summits snowed as bottom.

When going into among the hills it will go by mines, locations and quarries. The first one, Quarry Fray Luis Beltrán or of the Military ones, it provided the marbles for the Monument to the Flag, in Rosario .

In the km 5,7 an area of dangerous badenes affected for growing begin and next the dry stream is Pehuén-Có that erosiona the archaic sedimentary layers with abundance of fossils as ammonites. Then, quarries are happened to rocks tufa, plaster and deposits of red clay.

The in route to the right! it weighs to the oil location La Brea, one of the 26 with which it counts the department of Malargüe.

In the km 18 the road comes closer to the river Malargüe, wide, crystalline, stony and skirted by sallows, cortaderas, herdsmen and boulevards.

This landscape precedes the arrival to the malales that are high cut rocks to it itches, walls or natural bastions that the natives used as refuge. Their forms have given identity to the place and they have originated their name (Malal-Hué is malales earth).

After 21 km it will arrive at the Castles of Pincheira

They are formations of sedimentary-volcanic origin, capriciously erosionadas that rise imposing next to the right riverbank of the river.

Their hiding places are legendary: as their name remembers, there the Chilean realistic highwayman took refuge José Antonio Pincheira, before surrendering to the general Manuel Bulnes that had come to capture it from the Screamer.

Pincheira had been a Spanish official from Chile who escaped with a hundred of men after the independence, it crossed the mountain range and settled in Malargüe, being devoted to the pillage.

made alliances with the Indians and it fomented the malones. In 1829, they take advantage of abandonment of the strong ones due to the civil wars, it ended up camping in The Carrizal, sowing the panic in Mendoza 's population.

The government made a pact with him, recognizing it Colonel and Major of the south Frontier, but demanding him obedience.

Their brother Pablo and other official pincheirinos, as Hermosilla and Red, they continued with the attacks and the livestock robbery that then sold in Chile .

In 1830 they participated in the massacre of The Jackal, the following year, after serious disagreements with their brother, the «cacique» Pablo and other men escaped to the stay trasandina Oak Huacho, where they were found by Chilean troops to the control of Bulnes, and beheaded.

One year later, the general Bulnes arrived to Malargüe with 1.000 men, in mission of finishing with the Pincheira.

José Antonio was able to take refuge in two castles, while it negotiated a pact with the Chilean government that, finally, it got. That same year surrendered to Bulnes without resistance.

In front of the castles, in the left riverbank of the river, there is a pleasant municipal place to camp, with small beaches, tables and spits.

Near 1 km later on, crossing the bridge of the stream Mines, it will arrive to Juana's position Cuartara, to the foot of a malal of particular interest that can be climbed to know an archaeological place with a semicircular corral of pirca and rock eaves, where there was aboriginal pictografías.

Buried in goat guano was a mummy, today conserved in San Rafael 's Museum.

From the high of the malal will have a panoramic vision of the serpentine tributaries of the Malargüe.

This location, besides beautiful, highlighted for the strategic value that allowed to control the mouth of the river.

To return, take the same road toward the RN40.