The Most Beautiful National Parks in South America
9 places in 7 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful national parks in South America are Canaima National Park (Venezuela), Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Torres del Paine National Park (Chile). The list covers 9 national parks in 7 countries. Argentina has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
South America's national parks protect landscapes found nowhere else. The continent holds the longest mountain range on Earth, the oldest rock tablelands, the largest rainforest and a scatter of oceanic islands that changed how science understands life. Its parks span all of it: tropical glaciers and granite spires in the Andes, sandstone tepuis in the north, Triassic canyons in the arid south and coral cays in the Caribbean.
Canaima National Park in Venezuela covers a vast expanse of the Guiana Highlands, where flat-topped tepuis of Precambrian sandstone rise from the savanna and Angel Falls drops from Auyán-tepui. Iguazú National Park in Argentina protects the subtropical forest around the great falls. Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia is named for its three granite towers, set among glaciers flowing from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. Huascarán National Park protects the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world, crowned by Peru's highest summit.
The rest of the list moves between deserts, islands and coasts. Galápagos National Park covers nearly all the land of the archipelago where Darwin's observations of finches and tortoises fed his theory of evolution. Talampaya in Argentina is a canyon of red sandstone walls rich in Triassic fossils, and Aparados da Serra in southern Brazil holds the Itaimbezinho canyon, cut into the rim of a basalt plateau. Tayrona in Colombia joins rainforest to granite-boulder beaches on the Caribbean, and the Los Roques Archipelago in Venezuela protects a lagoon of coral cays and white sand.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canaima National Park | National park | Venezuela | ✓ |
| 2 | Iguazú National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 3 | Torres del Paine National Park | National park | Chile | |
| 4 | Huascarán National Park | National park | Peru | ✓ |
| 5 | Galápagos National Park | National park | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 6 | Talampaya National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 7 | Aparados da Serra National Park | National park | Brazil | |
| 8 | Tayrona National Natural Park | National park | Colombia | |
| 9 | Los Roques Archipelago | National park | Venezuela |
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. On the summits, cut off from the lowlands for millions of years, grows a world of endemic plants, including carnivorous pitcher plants, sundews and bladderworts that catch insects to make up for the poor soil.
Did you know? Angel, his wife and two companions needed 11 days to climb down the tepui on foot after their plane's wheels sank into the marshy summit.
02 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. Roughly four-fifths of the falls lie on the Argentine side, which is why the park is the place to be close to them: raised walkways run above and below the cascades, one crosses the upper river for about a kilometre to stand directly over the Devil's Throat, and boats cross to San Martín Island.
Did you know? Eleanor Roosevelt is said to have exclaimed "Poor Niagara!" on seeing Iguazú, whose tallest drops are much higher than Niagara's roughly 50 metres.
03 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. The contrast of granite spires, ice and coloured water under fast-moving Patagonian skies is what makes the landscape so extraordinary; the weather can change several times in an hour, and the wind is legendary.
Did you know? The British writer Lady Florence Dixie described the area in an 1880 book, calling the towers Cleopatra's Needles; her party counts as its first foreign tourists.
04 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. Its most famous plant is the Queen of the Andes, Puya raimondii, a giant bromeliad and a special object of protection; animals include the spectacled bear, the Andean condor, vicuña and the taruca deer, together with more than 120 bird species, from torrent ducks to giant hummingbirds.
Did you know? That 1970 avalanche raced about 18 km down the valley at an average speed of roughly 280 to 335 km/h.
05 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. At Tortuga Bay on Santa Cruz, white-tip reef sharks cruise the shallows in groups.
Did you know? Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island tortoise, was found in 1971 and died in 2012; his preserved body is displayed in the park.
06 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. Near the narrowest point, in the so-called Botanical Garden, a vertical chimney eroded into the wall throws back a startling echo, and in the shade grow the shrubs and trees of the high Monte desert. Condors circle the rim; guanacos, maras and foxes move across the open plain outside.
Did you know? The richest rock-art site, Los Pizarrones, is a single smooth slab of rock about 15 metres long whose surface is covered almost entirely with carved petroglyphs.
07 Aparados da Serra National Park
Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra
Brazil29.192° S 50.098° W
Image by InaeMiranda from Pixabay Its centrepiece is the Itaimbezinho canyon: 5.8 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? Besides Itaimbezinho, the park takes in the Fortaleza, Malacara and Índios Coroados canyons.
08 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. Offshore lie coral formations - around 110 coral species and over 400 fish have been recorded - and a marine life that rewards anyone who swims with a mask.
Did you know? The east is wet and the west dry because moist Caribbean trade winds slam into the Sierra Nevada and drop their rain on its eastern flanks.
09 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. Names such as Francisquí, Madrisquí, Crasquí and Cayo de Agua are each a small study in the same elements — a sand spit, a palm or two, a reef break and impossible water.
Did you know? The only land mammal native to the archipelago is the greater bulldog bat.
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 national parks in South America?
- On our list, Canaima National Park (Venezuela) ranks first, followed by Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Torres del Paine National Park (Chile).
- Which country has the most national parks in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Argentina (2), Venezuela (2) and Brazil (1).
- What is a tepui?
- A tepui is a flat-topped mountain of Precambrian sandstone with sheer cliff sides, found in the Guiana Highlands of Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil. Their isolated summits host many plants and animals found nowhere else.
- What is the highest mountain in Peru?
- Huascarán, in Huascarán National Park in the Cordillera Blanca. Its southern summit reaches about 6,768 metres, making it also the highest point in the tropics.
- Why are the Galápagos Islands important?
- Charles Darwin visited them in 1835 aboard HMS Beagle, and the differences between finches, tortoises and mockingbirds on separate islands helped shape his theory of evolution by natural selection. Galápagos became Ecuador's first national park in 1959.
- How many national parks are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 9 national parks in 7 countries. Argentina has the most, with 2.