The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in South America
17 places in 7 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in South America are Canaima National Park (Venezuela), Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (Brazil) and Amazon rainforest (Brazil). The list covers 17 gardens, parks and forests in 7 countries. Brazil has the most, with 5. Last updated 14 October 2026.
South America's protected landscapes run from the equator almost to Antarctica, and few continents pack such contrasts. The Guiana Shield holds some of the oldest exposed rock on earth, worn into flat-topped tepuis; the Andes rise to glaciers within sight of the tropics; and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts each have their own forests. On top of that, the Incas reshaped mountain slopes into agricultural terraces that are still in place.
Canaima in Venezuela is a park of tepuis, sheer sandstone mesas from which Angel Falls drops off the edge of Auyán-tepui. Iguazú on the Argentine side of the border surrounds a horseshoe of waterfalls in subtropical rainforest. In the Argentine northwest, Ischigualasto and Talampaya expose red and pale desert rock rich in fossils from the age of the earliest dinosaurs. Torres del Paine in Patagonia is named for its granite towers, and Huascarán in Peru protects the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca.
The range continues in Ecuador's Galápagos, where Darwin observed island species in the 1830s, and in Brazil's Aparados da Serra, where canyons split the edge of a high plateau. Colombia adds Tayrona, where forest meets Caribbean beaches beneath the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Cocora Valley with its tall wax palms. Moray in Peru is a set of Inca circular terraces sunk into the ground, and the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, founded in the early nineteenth century, is known for its avenue of royal palms.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canaima National Park | National park | Venezuela | ✓ |
| 2 | Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden | Botanical garden | Brazil | |
| 3 | Amazon rainforest | Forest | Brazil | |
| 4 | Iguazú National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 5 | Ischigualasto Provincial Park | Protected area | Argentina | ✓ |
| 6 | Torres del Paine National Park | National park | Chile | |
| 7 | Huascarán National Park | National park | Peru | ✓ |
| 8 | Galápagos National Park | National park | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 9 | Talampaya National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 10 | Aparados da Serra National Park | National park | Brazil | |
| 11 | Tayrona National Natural Park | National park | Colombia | |
| 12 | Moray | Terraced fields | Peru | |
| 13 | Cocora Valley | Forest | Colombia | |
| 14 | Los Roques Archipelago | National park | Venezuela | |
| 15 | Cashew Tree of Pirangi | Remarkable tree | Brazil | |
| 16 | Sítio Roberto Burle Marx | Historic garden | Brazil | |
| 17 | Maras Salt Pans | Terraced fields | Peru |
01 Canaima National Park
Parque Nacional Canaima
Venezuela5.319° N 61.795° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Jrafave from Pixabay From the rim of Auyán-tepui falls Angel Falls, at 979 metres the highest waterfall in the world, dropping towards the Devil's Canyon; the Kukenán falls, also among the highest, pour from another tepui. Mount Roraima, where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet, is the tallest of the tepuis and the easiest to climb.
Did you know? The Pemón name for the falls, Kerepakupai Merú, is usually translated as the waterfall of the deepest place.
02 Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden
Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
Brazil · 6.8 km from Rio de Janeiro22.968° S 43.224° W
Image by anapaulafelic from Pixabay Its signature is the Avenue of Royal Palms, a straight ride some 750 metres long lined with more than a hundred and thirty Roystonea oleracea, their smooth grey trunks rising like columns towards feathery crowns far overhead. All of them descend from a single tree, the Palma Mater, which João himself planted in 1809; it grew to almost 39 metres before lightning struck it in 1972.
Did you know? Its botanical library, with more than 32,000 volumes, is the largest specialised collection on plants in Brazil.
03 Amazon rainforest
Floresta amazônica
Brazil · 7.5 km from Manaus3.160° S 60.030° W
Lula Oficial · CC BY-SA 4.0 The forest around that confluence is not simply large; it's disproportionately full.
Did you know? A 2001 study counted more than 1,100 tree species in just a quarter of a square kilometre of Ecuadorian rainforest.
04 Iguazú National Park
Parque Nacional Iguazú
Argentina · 34.7 km from Foz do Iguaçu25.705° S 54.248° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by AndreaRochas from Pixabay About half of the river is swallowed by the Devil's Throat, a long, narrow chasm 80 to 90 metres wide into which the water thunders from three sides, throwing up a permanent column of spray. The Argentina–Brazil border runs through it.
Did you know? Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first European to see the falls, named them the Saltos de Santa María, the Falls of Saint Mary.
05 Ischigualasto Provincial Park
Argentina30.117° S 67.912° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
M.Bustos · CC BY-SA 4.0 The appeal is the scenery that erosion has carved out of soft grey, green, purple and red sediments. Bands of colour run across the Valle Pintado, the Painted Valley; on a bare plain called the Cancha de Bochas lie dozens of near-perfect stone spheres, concretions weathered out of the clay like balls left after a game; the Submarine rises from the flat ground like a conning tower; the Mushroom balances a wide cap on a slender stem.
Did you know? The first cynodont from the valley, Exaeretodon, was described in 1943 from samples sent by a geologist who was prospecting for coal.
06 Torres del Paine National Park
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine
Chile50.983° S 72.966° W
Image by plutozoom from Pixabay The park, established in 1959, covers more than 181,000 hectares between the steppe and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which blankets much of its western side. Grey Glacier, the largest of several glaciers here, flows down into Lake Grey, and the lakes below the massif, Pehoé, Nordenskjöld, Sarmiento and others, are coloured milky turquoise and blue by fine rock flour suspended in the water.
Did you know? The granite of the massif is a laccolith, a body of magma that cooled underground about 12.5 million years ago and was later exposed by erosion.
07 Huascarán National Park
Parque nacional Huascarán
Peru · 20.3 km from Huaraz9.400° S 77.400° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by vincecroos from Pixabay The range is a watershed between two oceans. Its western slopes drain to the Santa River and the Pacific; its eastern side feeds the Marañón and ultimately the Amazon. Between the valley floors at around 2,500 metres and the snow lines, the park climbs through patches of high Andean forest of Polylepis, puna grassland and alpine tundra.
Did you know? The name probably comes from the Quechua waska, 'rope', a nod to the mountain's two linked summits; an early map by Antonio Raimondi labels it 'Huascan'.
08 Galápagos National Park
Parque nacional Galápagos
Ecuador0.333° S 90.000° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Jonathan Green · CC BY 4.0 What makes the park unlike anywhere else is the animal life and its lack of fear. Marine iguanas, the only lizards in the world that feed in the sea, pile up on the lava to warm themselves after diving; giant tortoises graze in the highlands; flightless cormorants, Galápagos penguins, blue-footed boobies and, on Española, waved albatrosses breed within a few steps of the trail.
Did you know? More than 700 introduced plant species now grow on the islands, outnumbering the roughly 500 native and endemic plants.
09 Talampaya National Park
Parque Nacional Talampaya
Argentina29.796° S 67.811° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gino Lucas T. · CC BY-SA 2.5 The beauty here is in the shapes the erosion has left standing. Along the canyon the walls break into pinnacles and columns that visitors have named after what they resemble: La Catedral, a façade of fluted spires that looks uncannily Gothic; El Monje, a lone tower shaped like a hooded monk; the Kings, the Chessboard, the Castle.
Did you know? The canyon and its approaches were first mapped by Werner Lorenz, a German surveyor who had settled in the nearby town of Villa Unión.
10 Aparados da Serra National Park
Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra
Brazil29.192° S 50.098° W
Image by InaeMiranda from Pixabay 8 km long, up to 600 m wide and as much as 720 m deep, with walls that drop almost vertically. They are built of stacked basalt flows — part of the Serra Geral volcanic formation of the Paraná–Etendeka igneous province, with layers of Botucatu sandstone between them — and the successive flows show as horizontal bands in the cliffs. Two waterfalls pour over the rim, the Véu de Noiva (Bride's Veil) and the Cachoeira das Andorinhas.
Did you know? The lava flows belong to the Serra Geral Group, which geologists split into four formations: Torres, Vale do Sol, Palmas and Esmeralda.
11 Tayrona National Natural Park
Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona
Colombia · 4.5 km from Santa Marta11.283° N 74.183° W
Felipe Restrepo Acosta · CC BY-SA 4.0 The landscape changes as you move east. The western sector is dry tropical forest and cactus scrub; further east it turns to humid tropical forest, and higher up the slopes to cloud forest. The park records more than 770 plant species, around 300 birds and 108 mammals, among them one of the last populations of the endangered cotton-top tamarin.
Did you know? Jaguar, ocelot, margay and puma have all been recorded in Tayrona's forests.
12 Moray
Peru · 9.1 km from Urubamba13.329° S 72.196° W
Image by JustinW from Pixabay The leading theory is that this wasn't ornamental at all but a working agricultural research station: a place to test how different crops and even different varieties of the same crop — dozens of native potato and maize types — performed under specific combinations of sun exposure, wind, humidity, and soil before deciding what to plant where across the wider realm.
Did you know? Anthropologist John Earls identified upright stones on the terraces that seem to mark sunset shadows at the equinoxes and solstices; locals call them ñustas, or princesses.
13 Cocora Valley
Valle de Cocora
Colombia · 24.4 km from Armenia4.637° N 75.487° W
Image by Makalu from Pixabay The valley holds most of what remains of this palm's wild population. The trunks are coated with a natural wax that was once scraped off to make candles, and young fronds were cut in great numbers for Palm Sunday, until the species was declared the national tree and protected by law in 1985. It is classed as critically endangered, and a palm needs some eighty years even to begin reproducing, which makes every old tree in the valley a survivor.
Did you know? The palm was described scientifically in 1860 by the German botanist Hermann Karsten, who named it after the Quindío region.
14 Los Roques Archipelago
Archipiélago Los Roques
Venezuela11.857° N 66.757° W
Juan valero · CC BY-SA 3.0 The archipelago was declared a national park in 1972 and later listed as a Ramsar wetland. Around 1,500 square kilometres of coral surround the islands, with hundreds of species of fish, crustaceans and molluscs, mangroves on the lagoon edges, and four species of sea turtle nesting on the beaches. The park is divided into management zones that keep much of it off limits, which is part of why it still looks so untouched.
Did you know? The largest island is Cayo Grande at about 15 square kilometres, nearly nine times the size of inhabited Gran Roque.
15 Cashew Tree of Pirangi
Brazil · 25 km from Natal5.974° S 35.129° W
Jorge Savignon Jorrin · CC BY-SA 4.0 The explanation lies in an unusual way of growing. Instead of rising upright, the branches spread sideways, sag under their own weight until they touch the sandy ground, and then put down roots, sending up new stems that grow on in their turn. Of the five main limbs that leave the original trunk, four have behaved this way, so that it is now hard to say where the first trunk ends and the later growth begins.
Did you know? A single season's crop of around 70,000 to 80,000 cashew fruits weighs roughly two and a half tonnes.
16 Sítio Roberto Burle Marx
Brazil · 31.5 km from Nova Iguaçu23.024° S 43.545° W
Halley Pacheco de Oliveira · CC BY-SA 3.0 Burle Marx and his brother Siegfried bought the estate, then called Sítio Santo Antônio da Bica, in 1949. It began as a nursery for the plants he was gathering on expeditions into the Brazilian forest with botanists and architects, a practice of studying species in their own habitat that he learned from the botanist Henrique Lahmeyer de Mello Barreto.
Did you know? The site includes about 12,000 square metres of plant nurseries and a library of roughly 4,000 titles.
17 Maras Salt Pans
Salineras de Maras
Peru · 4.2 km from Urubamba13.302° S 72.155° W
Image by jdbenthien from Pixabay The source is a single saline spring rising at the head of the valley. Its water is led into a main channel and then divided through ever smaller channels from pool to pool; when a pond is full the inlet is closed and the sun does the rest, until a crust of salt can be scraped off by hand. The work is ancient.
Did you know? In 1969 Peru's government created the state salt company EMSAL and moved to take over salt production across the country, Maras included.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in South America?
- On our list, Canaima National Park (Venezuela) ranks first, followed by Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (Brazil) and Amazon rainforest (Brazil).
- Which country has the most gardens, parks and forests in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Brazil (5), Argentina (3) and Peru (3).
- What is a tepui?
- A tepui is a flat-topped table mountain with sheer cliff walls, found in the Guiana Highlands of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana. They are remnants of an ancient sandstone plateau, and their isolated summits support many plants found nowhere else.
- What is the tallest palm tree in the world?
- The Quindío wax palm, the national tree of Colombia, is considered the tallest palm species. Its slender trunks rise high above the pastures of the Cocora Valley.
- What was Moray used for?
- Moray is a group of concentric Inca terraces set in natural depressions near Cusco. The temperature differs from the top to the bottom, which has led many researchers to suggest the Incas used it to study crops in different conditions.
- How many gardens, parks and forests are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 17 gardens, parks and forests in 7 countries. Brazil has the most, with 5.