The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in South America

46 places in 8 countries · updated 13 October 2026

1. 01 Aconcagua

   Argentina32.653° S 70.012° W

   

   For mountaineers its appeal is that the normal route from the north is not technically difficult: no ropes or ice climbing are strictly needed. The difficulty is altitude. At the summit, air pressure is about 40 percent of sea level, most climbers suffer from altitude sickness to some degree, and around three people die on the mountain in an average year. Only an estimated 30 to 40 percent of those who set out reach the top.

   Did you know? A nine-year-old boy reached the summit in 2013, while the oldest recorded summiter was 87.

   More about Aconcagua →

2. 02 Sugarloaf Mountain

   Pão de Açúcar

   Brazil · 7.4 km from Rio de Janeiro22.949° S 43.157° W

   

   The summit is reached by one of the world's oldest passenger cableways. Engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos conceived it in 1907; German-made equipment was hauled up the rock by hand and on steel cables, and the first section, from Praia Vermelha to Morro da Urca, opened in 1912 — the first cable car in Brazil.

   Did you know? The first recorded ascent is said to have been made in 1817 by an Englishwoman, Henrietta Carstairs, by the eastern face.

   More about Sugarloaf Mountain →

3. 03 Mount Fitz Roy

   Monte Fitz Roy

   Argentina49.271° S 73.043° W

   

   The mountain's reputation among climbers is as severe as its looks. It was first climbed on 2 February 1952 by the French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone, by the south-east ridge, and it remains a technical ascent of steep rock and ice, made harder by the ferocious Patagonian wind and weather that can shut the summit off for days. Its silhouette is the emblem of the region: it appears on the flag and coat of arms of Santa Cruz Province.

   Did you know? The first free solo ascent of the mountain was made by the American climber Dean Potter in 2002.

   More about Mount Fitz Roy →

4. 04 Cotopaxi

   Volcán Cotopaxi

   Ecuador · 33.5 km from Latacunga0.681° S 78.438° W

   

   It is also one of the most active volcanoes in the country, with 87 known eruptions since the first recorded one in 1534. The worst came in 1742, 1744, 1768 and 1877. In the 1877 eruption pyroclastic flows melted the entire ice cap, and mudflows ran more than 100 km to the Pacific and into the Amazon basin; the colonial town of Latacunga was flattened more than once.

   Did you know? In the first four months of the eruption that began in October 2022, Ecuador's Geophysical Institute recorded around 8,000 earthquakes beneath the volcano.

   More about Cotopaxi →

5. 05 Licancabur

   Volcán Licancabur

   Chile22.834° S 67.883° W

   

   At the summit lies one of the highest lakes on Earth. The crater, around 400 to 500 metres across, holds a small freshwater pool of roughly 70 by 90 metres, a sheet of water sitting almost six kilometres up, in thin air under an intense high-altitude sun. The top of the mountain is also an archaeological site.

   Did you know? Climbers first reported the summit lake in 1953, and scientists discovered plankton living in it in 1981.

   More about Licancabur →

6. 06 Chimborazo

   Volcán Chimborazo

   Ecuador · 26.5 km from Guaranda1.469° S 78.817° W

   

   The mountain rises some 2,500 metres above highlands that already lie at 3,500–4,000 metres, on a base about 20 km wide, and on a clear day it can be seen from Guayaquil on the coast. The summit area has four tops, named Whymper, Veintimilla, Politécnica and Nicolás Martínez, and glaciers that reach down to about 4,600 metres on the northeast feed rivers for the surrounding provinces.

   Did you know? In 1831 Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall pushed higher than Humboldt, reaching an estimated 6,006 metres.

   More about Chimborazo →

7. 07 Mount Roraima

   Venezuela5.142° N 60.764° W

   

   That isolation shows in the biology. Around 35% of the species found on Roraima's summit are endemic — found nowhere else on the planet — including carnivorous plants and frogs that never developed the ability to survive outside this one plateau. Crossing the top, past black quartz formations and pools scoured into bare rock, feels less like hiking and more like visiting a separate planet's biosphere that happened to form on this one.

   Did you know? The main summit, 2,810 metres, sits on the plateau's Venezuelan southern edge, while Guyana's highest point, 2,772 metres, lies on the same tabletop about 8 km to the north.

   More about Mount Roraima →

8. 08 Colca Canyon

   Valle del Colca

   Peru15.597° S 72.056° W

   

   People have lived here for a very long time. Rock paintings in the valley are thought to be six to seven thousand years old, and the Collagua and Cabana peoples who built the terraces still farm them.

   Did you know? The valley's main towns date from the 1570s, when Viceroy Francisco de Toledo forced scattered villagers into planned settlements.

   More about Colca Canyon →

9. 09 Osorno Volcano

   Volcán Osorno

   Chile41.100° S 72.493° W

   

   The perfect cone stands on older foundations: Osorno is a stratovolcano built atop La Picada, a much-eroded volcano some 250,000 years old with a caldera six kilometres wide.

   Did you know? The first recorded ascent was made in 1848 by Jean Renous, who climbed the western flank over rock, snow and ice.

   More about Osorno Volcano →

10. 10 Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

    Parque Nacional dos Lençóis Maranhenses

    Brazil2.483° S 43.133° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The genuinely strange part is what lives in those lagoons. Visitors have long asked how fish end up in pools sitting on top of pure white sand, far from any river mouth — and the answer isn't that birds carry in eggs, as the popular story goes. Some lagoons connect underground to permanent waterways, letting fish move in once the water rises.

    Did you know? Endangered animals living in the park include the scarlet ibis, the West Indian manatee, the neotropical otter and the oncilla, a small wild cat.

    More about Lençóis Maranhenses National Park →

11. 11 Cueva de las Manos

    Argentina47.150° S 70.667° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The pigments were entirely local chemistry: iron oxides for the reds and purples, kaolin clay for white, a mineral called natrojarosite for yellow, manganese oxide for black — a full palette pulled straight out of the surrounding Patagonian rock and soil rather than traded in from anywhere else.

    Did you know? There are more than 2,000 hand images in and around the cave.

    More about Cueva de las Manos →

12. 12 Villarrica Volcano

    Volcán Villarrica

    Chile · 29.5 km from Villarrica39.420° S 71.939° W

    

    The Mapuche call the mountain Ruka Pillañ, the house of the pillán, a powerful spirit of the volcanoes. Geologically it is a basaltic-andesitic stratovolcano of the upper Pleistocene or younger, built inside the remains of two older calderas that collapsed about 100,000 and 13,700 years ago; around 26 scoria cones dot its flanks, and the whole edifice covers some 400 km².

    Did you know? Villarrica, Quetrupillán and Lanín line up along an ancient crustal fracture, an alignment unusual because it cuts across the main north-south fault of the region.

    More about Villarrica Volcano →

13. 13 Kukenán Tepuy

    Venezuela5.202° N 60.828° W

    

    What sets Kukenán apart is its waterfall. On the southern end of the tepui, a stream runs off the plateau and falls 674 metres down the bare cliff face — a white thread falling sheer down a dark wall, often half hidden by the cloud that wraps the mountain's top. From the savanna the cliffs seem to rise straight out of the grassland, and the scale only becomes clear when you try to follow the falling water from top to bottom.

    Did you know? The 1972 ascent by Stephen Platt, Hans Schwarzer, Ramón Blanco and Pemón guide Ambrosio Pérez may not be the first: a Bangor University party possibly climbed it in 1963.

    More about Kukenán Tepuy →

14. 14 Salar de Uyuni

    Bolivia20.333° S 67.700° W

    

    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.

    Did you know? The rocky islands in its centre are the tops of ancient volcanoes once drowned by a prehistoric lake, crusted with fragile coral-like deposits and fossil algae.

    More about Salar de Uyuni →

15. 15 Lanín

    Argentina39.637° S 71.503° W

    

    Geologically Lanín is the easternmost of a line of three large stratovolcanoes running northwest to southeast, with Quetrupillán in the middle and Villarrica at the far end; the alignment is thought to follow a fault beneath them. It is by far the quietest of the three in historical times. Its oldest known parts may go back to the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene, and most of the volcano is built of basalt.

    Did you know? In February 2017 instruments detected seismic movements inside the volcano, the first sign of activity ever recorded in historical times.

    More about Lanín →

16. 16 Perito Moreno Glacier

    Glaciar Perito Moreno

    Argentina50.493° S 73.128° W

    

    That advance creates one of the strangest natural cycles anywhere. As the glacier's front pushes across a narrow point in Lago Argentino, it welds itself to the rock on the far shore and dams the Brazo Rico arm of the lake completely.

    Did you know? The glacier first sealed off the Brazo Rico arm of the lake in 1917, the earliest recorded closure.

    More about Perito Moreno Glacier →

17. 17 Cerro Torre

    Argentina49.291° S 73.099° W

    

    Its history is a story of ambition and doubt. In 1959 the Italian climber Cesare Maestri announced that he and his partner Toni Egger had reached the summit; Egger was killed by an avalanche on the descent, and the camera said to hold the summit photographs was lost with him. Gaps in the account led many climbers to doubt the ascent.

    Did you know? The Compressor Route was only completed to the true summit in 1979, by Jim Bridwell and Steve Brewer, nine years after Maestri turned back below the ice mushroom.

    More about Cerro Torre →

18. 18 Serranía de Hornocal

    Argentina · 24.3 km from Humahuaca23.262° S 65.123° W

    

    The colours come from the rock itself. The range exposes the Yacoraite Formation, a sequence of limestones and sandstones laid down along muddy shores and in shallow seas at the very end of the Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago; the boundary between the age of dinosaurs and the age that followed runs through its upper layers. Across the region the same beds preserve dinosaur footprints, fossil eggs and stromatolites.

    Did you know? The Quebrada de Humahuaca below the range is about 155 kilometres long and has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years.

    More about Serranía de Hornocal →

19. 19 Alpamayo

    Peru8.879° S 77.653° W

    

    The mountain lies inside Huascarán National Park, surrounded by other big names of the range: Artesonraju, Huandoy Norte and the northern summit of Huascarán are all within view from its slopes. Its climbing history begins with a dispute.

    Did you know? In 1966 a British team sponsored by the BBC made the first filmed traverse linking Alpamayo's two summits.

    More about Alpamayo →

20. 20 Parinacota

    Volcán Parinacota

    Chile18.166° S 69.142° W

    

    The symmetry is deceptive, because Parinacota once lost a whole side of itself. Sometime between about 8,000 and 20,000 years ago its western flank collapsed, sending some 5-6 cubic kilometres of rock racing more than 20 km west across the plateau. The avalanche dammed the drainage and created Lake Chungará, which lies at about 4,517 m, one of the highest large lakes in the world.

    Did you know? The international border runs along the rim of the summit crater, so the crater itself lies in Bolivia while most of the mountain stands in Chile.

    More about Parinacota →

21. 21 Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain)

    Vinicunca

    Peru13.870° S 71.303° W

    

    Each band is a different kind of rock. The pink comes from red clays, muds and sands, the white from quartz-rich sandstone and marl, the deep red from claystones loaded with iron, the green from phyllites rich in iron and magnesium, the brown from a coarse conglomerate containing magnesium, and the mustard yellow from sulphur-bearing calcareous sandstones.

    Did you know? After public outcry over the mining concession, President Martín Vizcarra decreed a twelve-month moratorium on all mining in the area in November 2018.

    More about Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain) →

22. 22 Corcovado

    Brazil · 5 km from Rio de Janeiro22.953° S 43.212° W

    

    The statue of Christ the Redeemer was built between 1922 and 1931 after a campaign by the Catholic Circle of Rio, funded mainly by donations from Brazilian Catholics. The Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa led the project, the French sculptor Paul Landowski created the figure, the Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida modelled the face, and the French engineer Albert Caquot designed the reinforced-concrete structure.

    Did you know? Early designs for the summit statue showed Christ holding a globe and a cross; the open-armed figure was chosen only later.

    More about Corcovado →

23. 23 El Tatio

    Chile22.331° S 68.010° W

    

    The time to see it is dawn. In the freezing air of early morning the steam from dozens of vents condenses into white columns that stand above the plain and glow as the sun comes over the ridges; later in the day, as the air warms, they fade to little more than shimmer.

    Did you know? The 2009 blowout produced a steam fountain that roared from 8 September until the well was finally plugged on 4 October.

    More about El Tatio →

24. 24 Valle de la Luna, Atacama

    Valle de la Luna

    Chile22.911° S 68.323° W

    

    The salt range itself was born when movements of the Earth's crust pushed up and folded ancient lake and sea deposits, layers of salt, gypsum and clay that now stand on edge for about a hundred kilometres. In a climate where rain is extremely rare, wind and the occasional flood have worked these soft layers into strange forms. White salt crusts on the ground look like frost or snow, and some of the ridges are cut by narrow canyons and caves.

    Did you know? Gypsum towers up to ten metres tall stand in lines along fractures and are thought to be still growing as groundwater evaporates beneath them.

    More about Valle de la Luna, Atacama →

25. 25 Quebrada de Humahuaca

    Argentina · 0.1 km from Humahuaca23.200° S 65.349° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The most famous views are at the side valleys. At Purmamarca the little adobe village sits at the foot of the Cerro de los Siete Colores, the Hill of Seven Colours, one of Argentina's best-known landscapes. About 25 km from Humahuaca town, the Serranía de Hornocal exposes the banded limestone of the Yacoraite formation along a range that reaches 4,761 metres.

    Did you know? The valley floor climbs from about 1,600 metres in the south to around 4,500 metres on the surrounding heights.

    More about Quebrada de Humahuaca →

26. 26 Vale da Lua

    Brazil14.187° S 47.790° W

    

    The sculpting is the work of the river itself. Over an immense span of time, pebbles and sand carried by fast-flowing water have been spun in eddies against the rock, drilling cylindrical hollows that merge into one another as they deepen and widen.

    Did you know? Enlarged in 2017 to about 240,000 hectares, the park protects 466 springs in a region known as the water tank of Brazil's Central Plateau.

    More about Vale da Lua →

27. 27 Cerros de Mavecure

    Colombia3.466° N 67.976° W

    

    The hills are monoliths of very old crystalline rock, outliers of the Guiana Shield, the Precambrian basement that underlies much of north-eastern South America and also forms the tepuis and inselbergs of Venezuela and Guyana.

    Did you know? The wetland straddles two worlds: its flooded forests belong to the Amazon biome, while its black, white and clear waters are typical of the Orinoco.

    More about Cerros de Mavecure →

28. 28 Árbol de Piedra

    Bolivia22.052° S 67.883° W

    

    The rock is a ventifact — a form carved by wind-blown sand. On this exposed plateau strong winds drive grains of sand close to the ground, and over time the soft rock has been worn away much more at its base, leaving the narrow trunk and wide head. The Stone Tree stands among other eroded outcrops protruding from the sand dunes of the Siloli desert.

    Did you know? Laguna Colorada is less than 1 m deep, shallow enough for its flamingos to walk across it.

    More about Árbol de Piedra →

29. 29 Puente del Inca

    Argentina32.827° S 69.911° W

    

    Its origin combines ice and hot water. During the ice ages, glaciers left great piles of rubble in the valley; mineral-rich water from the springs seeped through the debris and cemented it into solid rock. The river then cut a channel through the weaker lower layers, leaving the hardened upper part standing as a bridge. Charles Darwin crossed this way in March 1835 and sketched the bridge with its long stalactites hanging from the underside.

    Did you know? Engineering studies estimate the arch's factor of safety at 1.5 to 3.0, meaning it can comfortably carry its own weight today.

    More about Puente del Inca →

30. 30 Salinas Grandes

    Argentina23.633° S 65.894° W

    

    The surface is not perfectly smooth. Drying and recrystallisation crack the crust into a mesh of polygons edged with raised ridges of salt, a pattern that runs on to the edge of sight. Here and there small springs, called the "eyes" of the salt flat, open in the crust, and local salt workers have cut long rectangular pools into it, where brine collects and salt crystallises for harvesting.

    Did you know? The salt crust averages around 30 centimetres in thickness, though it is thicker in places.

    More about Salinas Grandes →