The Most Beautiful Lakes in South America
7 places in 3 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in South America are Laguna Colorada (Bolivia), Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) and Laguna Miscanti (Chile). The list covers 7 lakes in 3 countries. Bolivia has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
South America's most striking lakes lie high in the Andes, where thin air, intense sunlight and mineral-rich volcanic ground produce colours rarely seen at lower altitudes. On the altiplano of Bolivia and Chile, lagoons sit at more than four thousand metres, tinted by algae and dissolved minerals and fed on by flamingos. Farther north, in the Peruvian Andes, glaciers grind rock into fine flour that turns their meltwater lakes an opaque turquoise.
Laguna Colorada, in Bolivia's Eduardo Avaroa reserve, is stained red by algae and edged with white borax islands where James's flamingos gather. Laguna Verde lies at the foot of the Licancabur volcano, its water green from dissolved minerals. The Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, is the bed of a vanished prehistoric lake; after rain a thin film of water turns it into a mirror of the sky.
On the Chilean side, Laguna Miscanti is a deep blue lake below the Miñiques volcano in the Atacama, and Lake Chungará, one of the highest lakes in the world, reflects the snowy cone of Parinacota in Lauca National Park. In Peru, Laguna 69 sits beneath the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca in Huascarán National Park, and Humantay Lake fills a basin below the Humantay glacier in the mountains of the Cusco region.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Laguna Colorada | Lake | Bolivia | |
| 2 | Salar de Uyuni | Salt flat | Bolivia | |
| 3 | Laguna Miscanti | Lake | Chile | |
| 4 | Laguna Verde | Lake | Bolivia | |
| 5 | Lake Chungará | Lake | Chile | |
| 6 | Laguna 69 | Lake | Peru | |
| 7 | Humantay Lake | Lake | Peru |
01 Laguna Colorada
Bolivia22.199° S 67.781° W
Image by TravelCoffeeBook from Pixabay Scattered across that red water are white islands that look like salt but aren't — they're borax, sodium borate deposits left behind by ancient geothermal activity in the basin. It's the same mineral used industrially in detergents and glass manufacturing, occurring here as a natural landscape feature rather than something mined.
Did you know? Although it spreads over roughly 10.7 by 9.6 kilometres, the lagoon's average depth is only about 35 centimetres.
02 Salar de Uyuni
Bolivia20.333° S 67.700° W
Image by WaSZI from Pixabay What you cannot see is more consequential than what you can. Under that white crust sits a brine reservoir holding an estimated 50–70% of the world's known lithium reserves — the metal in almost every phone and EV battery on Earth. That single fact turns Uyuni into a genuine flashpoint: the same flatness and mineral chemistry that make it visually extraordinary also make it one of the most contested resources on the continent, with Bolivia, foreign mining consortia, and local communities all negotiating how much of that brine gets pumped out.
Did you know? The name Uyuni comes from Aymara and means a pen or enclosure.
03 Laguna Miscanti
Chile23.725° S 67.765° W
Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake is young in geological terms. Roughly twenty-two thousand years ago tectonic movement and volcanic rock dammed this basin, and since then it has filled a hollow of some 13 square kilometres, though rarely more than about ten metres deep. A lava flow separates it from its smaller sister, Laguna Miñiques, a kilometre and a half to the south and about ten metres lower; the two are almost always seen together, as one landscape of twin lakes beneath twin volcanoes. The water is brackish rather than fresh, which shapes the life around it.
Did you know? In the past the lake stood about 29 metres higher than today and covered roughly 38 square kilometres, almost three times its present area.
04 Laguna Verde
Bolivia22.795° S 67.835° W
Pedro Szekely from USA · CC BY 2.0 The color itself is a chemistry-meets-weather phenomenon rather than a living one. Copper and arsenic-bearing minerals from the surrounding volcanic terrain dissolve into the shallow water, and when wind picks up across the lake's surface, it stirs suspended sediment and mineral particles into the water column, shifting the color from a calm pale turquoise to a vivid, almost frothy emerald. That means the same lagoon can look like two different lakes depending on the hour and the wind — unlike Lake Hillier or Lake Natron, whose colors come from living microorganisms, this one comes from mineral chemistry reacting to physical disturbance.
Did you know? During the last glacial maximum the lake stood at least 45 metres higher and merged with neighbouring Laguna Blanca; it reached its highest level about 13,240 years ago.
05 Lake Chungará
Chile18.242° S 69.153° W
Fabolu · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake owes its existence to a catastrophe. Some thousands of years ago, the earlier cone of Parinacota collapsed in a gigantic landslide, and the avalanche of debris swept across the valley and blocked the course of the Lauca River. Water pooled behind the natural dam, and Chungará was born. The lake is about 8.75 kilometres long and covers some 22 square kilometres. Other volcanoes ring the basin, among them Quisiquisini and Ajoya.
Did you know? Some 5 to 6 cubic kilometres of volcano slid about 23 kilometres west, leaving a natural dam around 40 metres high across the valley.
06 Laguna 69
Peru9.010° S 77.612° W
Christian Cruzado · CC BY 2.0 The name is an accident of bureaucracy. When Huascarán National Park was created in 1975, every lake inside its boundaries had to be entered on a list, and those without a traditional Quechua name, unlike neighbours such as Palcacocha or Auquiscocha, were simply given numbers. Number 69 stuck, and the lake has become one of the best-known walking destinations in the range. The path begins at the Cebolla Pampa campsite and climbs beside the stream that drains the lake, past a chain of cascades, through high grassland of ichu and the towering flower spikes of Puya raimondii. Andean condors and vicuñas are among the animals recorded along the way.
Did you know? Chacraraju's 6,108-metre west summit was first reached only on 31 July 1956, by a French expedition led by the mountaineer Lionel Terray.
07 Humantay Lake
Laguna Humantay
Peru13.379° S 72.585° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake was born from the meltwater of the Humantay glacier and its neighbours. It is about 620 metres long and 160 metres wide, with a shoreline of some 1.4 kilometres and an area of about 5.8 hectares, and is estimated to be up to 17 metres deep. Around it grow queñua trees, tayanca shrubs and the tough bunch grass of the high Andes. Taruca deer, white-tailed deer, Andean foxes, Andean geese and condors share the slopes with grazing alpacas, horses, cattle and sheep.
Did you know? The name Salkantay comes from the Quechua sallqa, meaning wild or untamed, and is often translated as "Savage Mountain".
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 lakes in South America?
- On our list, Laguna Colorada (Bolivia) ranks first, followed by Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) and Laguna Miscanti (Chile).
- Which country has the most lakes in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Bolivia (3), Chile (2) and Peru (2).
- Why is Laguna Colorada red?
- The colour comes from red algae and other microorganisms that thrive in the lagoon's shallow, mineral-rich water. The shade changes during the day as wind and sunlight stir the water.
- Is the Salar de Uyuni a lake?
- It is a salt flat rather than a lake, the dried bed of prehistoric lakes that once covered the altiplano. In the rainy season a thin layer of water can cover it, creating its famous mirror effect.
- Why are glacial lakes in the Andes turquoise?
- Glaciers grind the rock beneath them into very fine particles called rock flour. Suspended in meltwater, these particles scatter sunlight and give lakes such as Laguna 69 their milky turquoise colour.
- How many lakes are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 7 lakes in 3 countries. Bolivia has the most, with 3.